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SADHANA 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limiteo 

LONDON . BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMH^LAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd. 

TORONTO 



S A D H A N A 



THE REALISATION OF LIFE 



BY 
RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

AUTHOR OF ' GITANJALI ' 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1913 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1913, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1913 












TO 

ERNEST RHYS 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

Perhaps it Is well for me to explain that the subject- 
matter of the papers published in this book has 
not been philosophically treated, nor has it been 
approached from the scholar's point of view. The 
writer has been brought up in a family where texts 
of the Upanishads are used in daily worship; and he 
has had before him the example of his father, who 
lived his long life in the closest communion with 
God, while not neglecting his duties to the world, or 
allowing his keen interest in all human affairs to 
suffer any abatement. So in these papers, it may be 
hoped, western readers will have an opportunity of 
coming into touch with the ancient spirit of India as 
revealed in our sacred texts and manifested in the life 
of to-day. 

All the great utterances of man have to be judged 
not by the letter but by the spirit — the spirit which 
unfolds itself with the growth of life in history. We 
get to know the real meaning of Christianity by 

vii 



viii SADHANA 

observing its living aspect at the present moment — 
however different that may be, even in important 
respects, from the Christianity of earlier periods. 

For western scholars the great religious scriptures 
of India seem to possess merely a retrospective and 
archaeological interest; but to us they are of living 
importance, and we cannot help thinking that they 
lose their significance when exhibited in labelled 
cases — mummied specimens of human thought and 
aspiration, preserved for all time in the wrappings of 
erudition. 

The meaning of the living words that come out 
of the experiences of great hearts can never be 
exhausted by any one system of logical interpreta- 
tion. They have to be endlessly explained by the 
commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an 
added mystery in each new revelation. To me the 
verses of the Upanishads and the teachings of Buddha 
have ever been things of the spirit, and therefore 
endowed with boundless vital growth; and I have 
used them, both in my own life and in my preach- 
ing, as being instinct with individual meaning for 
me, as for others, and awaiting for their confirma- 
tion, my own special testimony, which must have its 
value because of its individuality. 

I should add perhaps that these papers embody 
In a connected form, suited to this publication, ideas 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE ix 

which have been culled from several of the Bengali 
discourses which I am in the habit of giving to my 
students in my school at Bolpur in Bengal; and I 
have used here and there translations of passages 
from these done hy my friends, Babu Satish Chandra 
Roy and Babu Ajit Kumar Chakravarti. The last 
paper of this series, "Realisation in Action," has 
been translated from my Bengali discourse on 
"Karma-yoga" by my nephew, Babu Surendra Nath 
Tagore. 

I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude 
to Professor James H. Woods, of Harvard Univer- 
sity, for his generous appreciation which encouraged 
me to complete this series of papers and read most 
of them before the Harvard University. And I offer 
my thanks to Mr. Ernest Rhys for his kindness in 
helping me with suggestions and revisions, and in 
going through the proofs. 

A word may be added about the pronouncing of 
Sadhana: the accent falls decisively on the first a, 
which has the broad sound of the letter. 



CONTENTS 



I. The Relation of the Individual to the 

Universe 
II. Soul Consciousness 

III. The Problem of Evil 

IV. The Problem of Self 
V. Realisation in Love 

VI. Realisation in Action 
VII. The Realisation of Beauty 
VIII. The Realisation of the Infinite 



page 

I 

23 
45 
67 

93 
117 

135 
145 



zi 



THE RELATION OF THE 
INDIVIDUAL TO THE UNIVERSE 



THE RELATION OF 
THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE UNIVERSE 

The civilisation of ancient Greece was nurtured 
within city walls. In fact, all the modern civilisa- 
tions have their cradles of brick and mortar. 

These walls leave their mark deep in the minds 
of men. They set up a principle of "divide and 
rule" in our mental outlook, which begets In us a 
habit of securing all our conquests by fortifying 
them and separating them from one another. We 
divide nation and nation, knowledge and knowledge, 
man and nature. It breeds in us a strong suspicion 
of whatever is beyond the barriers we have built, 
and everything has to fight hard for its entrance 
into our recognition. 

When the first Aryan invaders appeared in India 
it was a vast land of forests, and the new-comers 
rapidly took advantage of them. These forests 
afforded them shelter from the fierce heat of the sun 
and the ravages of tropical storms, pastures for 
cattle, fuel for sacrificial fire, and materials for 
building cottages. And the different Aryan clans 

3 



4 SADHANA i 

with their patriarchal heads settled in the different 
forest tracts which had some special advantage of 
natural protection, and food and water in plenty. 

Thus in India it was in the forests that our civili- 
sation had its birth, and it took a distinct character 
from this origin and environment. It was sur- 
rounded by the vast life of nature, was fed and clothed 
by her, and had the closest and most constant inter- 
course with her varying aspects. 

Such a life, it may be thought, tends to have the 
effect of dulling human intelligence and dwarfing 
the incentives to progress by lowering the standards 
of existence. But in ancient India we find that the 
circumstances of forest life did not overcome man's 
mind, and did not enfeeble the current of his energies, 
but only gave to it a particular direction. Having 
been in constant contact with the living growth of 
nature, his mind was free from the desire to extend 
his dominion by erecting boundary walls around his 
acquisitions. His aim was not to acquire but to 
realise, to enlarge his consciousness by growing with 
and growing into his surroundings. He felt that 
truth is all-comprehensive, that there is no such 
thing as absolute isolation in existence, and the only 
way of attaining truth is through the interpenetration 
of our being into all objects. To realise this great 
harmony between man's spirit and the spirit of the 
world was the endeavour of the forest-dwelling sages 
of ancient India. 



I INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSE 5 

In later days there came a time when these prime- 
val forests gave way to cultivated fields, and wealthy 
cities sprang up on all sides. Mighty kingdoms were 
established, which had communications with all the 
great powers of the world. But even In the heyday 
of Its material prosperity the heart of India ever 
looked back with adoration upon the early Ideal 
of strenuous self-realisation, and the dignity of the 
simple life of the forest hermitage, and drew its 
best Inspiration from the wisdom stored there. 

The west seems to take a pride In thinking that 
It Is subduing nature; as if we are living In a hostile 
world where we have to wrest everything we want 
from an unwilling and alien arrangement of things. 
This sentiment Is the product of the city-wall habit 
and training of mind. For In the city life man 
naturally directs the concentrated light of his mental 
vision upon his own life and works, and this creates 
an artificial dissociation between himself and the 
Universal Nature within whose bosom he lies. 

But In India the point of view was different; It 
Included the world with the man as one great truth. 
India put all her emphasis on the harmony that 
exists between the individual and the universal. 
She felt we could have no communication whatever 
with our surroundings If they were absolutely foreign 
to us. Man's complaint against nature is that he 
has to acquire most of his necessaries by his own 
efforts. Yes, but his efforts are not in vain; he is 



6 SADHANA i 

reaping success every day, and that shows there is a 
rational connection between him and nature, for we 
never can make anything our own except that which 
is truly related to us. 

We can look upon a road from two different points 
of view. One regards it as dividing us from the ob- 
ject of our desire; in that case we count every step 
of our journey over it as something attained by 
force in the face of obstruction. The other sees it 
as the road which leads us to our destination; and 
as such it is part of our goal. It is already the 
beginning of our attainment, and by journeying 
over it we can only gain that which in itself it offers 
to us. This last point of view is that of India with 
regard to nature. For her, the great fact is that we 
are in harmony with nature; that man can think 
because his thoughts are in harmony with things; 
that he can use the forces of nature for his own 
purpose only because his power is in harmony with 
the power which is universal, and that in the long 
run his purpose never can knock against the purpose 
which works through nature. 

In the west the prevalent feeling is that nature 
belongs exclusively to inanimate things and to beasts, 
that there is a sudden unaccountable break where 
human-nature begins. According to it, everything 
that is low in the scale of beings is merely nature, 
and whatever has the stamp of perfection on it, 
intellectual or moral, is human-nature. It is like 



I INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSE 7 

dividing the bud and the blossom into two separate 
categories, and putting their grace to the credit of two 
different and antithetical principles. But the Indian 
mind never has any hesitation in acknowledging its 
kinship with nature, its unbroken relation with all. 

The fundamental unity of creation was not simply 
a philosophical speculation for India; it was her life- 
object to realise this great harmony in feeling and 
in action. With meditation and service, with a 
regulation of her life, she cultivated her conscious- 
ness in such a way that everything had a spiritual 
meaning to her. The earth, water and light, fruits 
and flowers, to her were not merely physical phenom- 
ena to be turned to use and then left aside. They 
were necessary to her in the attainment of her ideal 
of perfection, as every note is necessary to the com- 
pleteness of the symphony. India Intuitively felt 
that the essential fact of this world has a vital mean- 
ing for us; we have to be fully alive to it and establish 
a conscious relation with it, not merely impelled by 
scientific curiosity or greed of material advantage, 
but realising it in the spirit of sympathy, with a 
large feeling of joy and peace. 

The man of science knows, in one aspect, that 
the world is not merely what it appears to be to our 
senses; he knows that earth and water are really the 
play of forces that manifest themselves to us as earth 
and water — how, we can but partially apprehend. 
Likewise the man who has his spiritual eyes open 



8 SADHANA i 

knows that the ultimate truth about earth and water 
lies in our apprehension of the eternal will which 
works in time and takes shape in the forces we realise 
under those aspects. This is not mere knowledge, 
as science is, but it is a preception of the soul by 
the soul. This does not lead us to power, as knowl- 
edge does, but it gives us joy, which is the product 
of the union of kindred things. The man whose 
acquaintance with the world does not lead him 
deeper than science leads him, will never understand 
what it is that the man with the spiritual vision finds 
in these natural phenomena. The water does not 
merely cleanse his limbs, but it purifies his heart; 
for it touches his soul. The earth does not merely 
hold his body, but it gladdens his mind; for its 
contact is more than a physical contact — it is a living 
presence. When a man does not realise his kinship 
with the world, he lives in a prison-house whose walls 
are alien to him. When he meets the eternal spirit 
in all objects, then is he emancipated, for then he 
discovers the fullest significance of the world into 
which he is born; then he finds himself in perfect 
truth, and his harmony with the all is established. 
In India men are enjoined to be fully awake to the 
fact that they are in the closest relation to things 
around them, body and soul, and that they are to 
hail the morning sun, the flowing water, the fruitful 
earth, as the manifestation of the same living truth 
which holds them in its embrace. Thus the text of 



I INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSE 9 

our everyday meditation is the Gayatri, a verse which 
is considered to be the epitome of all the Vedas. 
By its help we try to reaHse the essential unity of the 
world with the conscious soul of man; we learn 
to perceive the unity held together by the one 
Eternal Spirit, whose power creates the earth, the 
sky, and the stars, and at the same time irradiates 
our minds with the light of a consciousness that 
moves and exists in unbroken continuity with the 
outer world. 

It is not true that India has tried to ignore differ- 
ences of value in different things, for she knows that 
would make life impossible. The sense of the supe- 
riority of man in the scale of creation has not been 
absent from her mind. But she has had her own 
idea as to that in which his superiority really con- 
sists. It is not in the power of possession but in 
the power of union. Therefore India chose her 
places of pilgrimage wherever there was in nature 
some special grandeur or beauty, so that her mind 
could come out of its world of narrow necessities and 
realise its place in the infinite. This was the reason 
why in India a whole people who once were meat- 
eaters gave up taking animal food to cultivate the 
sentiment of universal sympathy for life, an event 
unique in the history of mankind. 

India knew that when by physical and mental 
barriers we violently detach ourselves from the 
inexhaustible life of nature; when we become merely 



lo SADHANA i 

man, but not man-in-the-unlverse, we create be- 
wildering problems, and having shut off the source 
of their solution, we try all kinds of artificial methods 
each of which brings its own crop of interminable 
difficulties. When man leaves his resting-place in 
universal nature, when he walks on the single rope 
of humanity, it means either a dance or a fall for 
him, he has ceaselessly to strain every nerve and 
muscle to keep his balance at each step, and then, in 
the intervals of his weariness, he fulminates against 
Providence and feels a secret pride and satisfaction 
in thinking that he has been unfairly dealt with by 
the whole scheme of things. 

But this cannot go on for ever. Man must realise 
the wholeness of his existence, his place in the infinite; 
he must know that hard as he may strive he can 
never create his honey within the cells of his hive, 
for the perennial supply of his life food is outside 
their walls. He must know that when man shuts 
himself out from the vitalising and purifying touch 
of the infinite, and falls back upon himself for his 
sustenance and his healing, then he goads himself 
into madness, tears himself into shreds, and eats his 
own substance. Deprived of the background of the 
whole, his poverty loses its one great quality, which 
is simplicity, and becomes squalid and shamefaced. 
His wealth is no longer magnanimous; it grows 
merely extravagant. His appetites do not minister 
to his life, keeping to the limits of their purpose; 



I INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSE ii 

they become an end In themselves and set fire to his 
life and play the fiddle In the lurid light of the con- 
flagration. Then It Is that In our self-expression we 
try to startle and not to attract; In art we strive for 
originality and lose sight of truth which is old and 
yet ever new; In literature we miss the complete 
view of man which is simple and yet great, but he 
appears as a psychological problem or the embodi- 
ment of a passion that Is intense because abnormal 
and because exhibited in the glare of a fiercely 
emphatic light which Is artificial. When man's con- 
sciousness is restricted only to the immediate vicinity 
of his human self, the deeper roots of his nature do 
not find their permanent soil, his spirit is ever on the 
brink of starvation, and in the place of healthful 
strength he substitutes rounds of stimulation. Then 
it is that man misses his inner perspective and 
measures his greatness by its bulk and not by Its 
vital link with the infinite, judges his activity by its 
movement and not by the repose of perfection — the 
repose which is in the starry heavens, in the ever- 
flowing rhythmic dance of creation. 

The first invasion of India has Its exact parallel 
in the invasion of America by the European settlers. 
They also were confronted with primeval forests and 
a fierce struggle with aboriginal races. But this 
struggle between man and man, and man and nature 
lasted till the very end; they never came to any 
terms. In India the forests which were the hablta- 



12 SADHANA I 

tion of barbarians became the sanctuary of sages, but 
in America these great living cathedrals of nature 
had no deeper significance to man. They brought 
wealth and power to him, and perhaps at times they 
ministered to his enjoyment of beauty, and inspired a 
solitary poet. They never acquired a sacred associa- 
tion in the hearts of men as the site of some great 
spiritual reconcilement where man's soul had its 
meeting-place with the soul of the world. 

I do not for a moment wish to suggest that things 
should have been otherwise. It would be an utter 
waste of opportunities if history were to repeat 
itself exactly in the same manner in every place. It 
is best for the commerce of the spirit that people 
differently situated should bring their different prod- 
ucts into the market of humanity, each of which is 
complementary and necessary to the others. All 
that I wish to say is that India at the outset of her 
career met with a special combination of circum- 
stances which was not lost upon her. She had, ac- 
cording to her opportunities, thought and pondered, 
striven and suffered, dived into the depths of exist- 
ence, and achieved something which surely cannot be 
without its value to people whose evolution in history 
took a different way altogether. Man for his perfect 
growth requires all the living elements that constitute 
his complex life; that is why his food has to be culti- 
vated in different fields and brought from different 
sources. 



I INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSE 13 

Civilisation is a kind of mould that each nation is 
busy making for itself to shape its men and women 
according to its best ideal. All its institutions, its 
legislature, its standard of approbation and condem- 
nation, its conscious and unconscious teachings tend 
toward that object. The modern civilisation of the 
west, by all its organised efforts, is trying to turn 
out men perfect in physical, intellectual, and moral 
efficiency. There the vast energies of the nations 
are employed in extending man's power over his 
surroundings, and people are combining and strain- 
ing every faculty to possess and to turn to account 
all that they can lay their hands upon, to overcome 
every obstacle on their path of conquest. They are 
ever disciplining themselves to fight nature and 
other races; their armaments are getting more and 
more stupendous every day; their machines, their 
appliances, their organisations go on multiplying at 
an amazing rate. This is a splendid achievement, 
no doubt, and a wonderful manifestation of man's 
masterfulness which knows no obstacle, and which 
has for its object the supremacy of himself over every- 
thing else. 

The ancient civilisation of India had its own Ideal 
of perfection towards which its efforts were directed. 
Its aim was not attaining power, and it neglected 
to cultivate to the utmost its capacities, and to 
organise men for defensive and offensive purposes, 
for co-operation in the acquisition of wealth and for 



14 SADHANA I 

military and political ascendancy. The ideal that 
India tried to realise led her best men to the isola- 
tion of a contemplative life, and the treasures that 
she gained for mankind by penetrating into the mys- 
teries of reality cost her dear in the sphere of worldly 
success. Yet, this also was a sublime achievement, — 
it was a supreme manifestation of that human aspi- 
ration which knows no limit, and which has for its 
object nothing less than the realisation of the 
Infinite. 

There were the virtuous, the wise, the courageous; 
there were the statesmen, kings and emperors of 
India; but whom amongst all these classes did she 
look up to and choose to be the representative of 
men? 

They were the rishis. What were the rishis.'^ 
They who having attained the supreme soul in knowledge 
were filled with wisdom^ and having found him in 
union with the soul were in perfect harmony with the 
inner self; they having realised him in the heart were 
free from all selfish desires, and having experienced him 
in all the activities of the world, had attained calmness. 
The rishis were they who having reached the supreme 
God from all sides had found abiding peace, had become 
united with all, had entered into the life of the Universe} 

Thus the state of realising our relationship with 

^ Samprapyainam rishayo jnanatriptah 
Krltatmano vitaragah pragantah 
te sarvagam sarvatah prapya dhirah 
Yuktatmanah sarvamevavifanti. 



I INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSE 15 

all, of entering into everything through union with 
God, was considered in India to be the ultimate end 
and fulfilment of humanity. 

Man can destroy and plunder, earn and accumu- 
late, invent and discover, but he is great because his 
soul comprehends all. It is dire destruction for him 
when he envelopes his soul in a dead shell of callous 
habits, and when a blind fury of works whirls round 
him like an eddying dust storm, shutting out the 
horizon. That indeed kills the very spirit of his 
being, which is the spirit of comprehension. Essenti- 
ally man is not a slave either of himself or of the 
world; but he is a lover. His freedom and fulfil- 
ment is in love, which is another name for perfect 
comprehension. By this power of comprehension, 
this permeation of his being, he is united with the 
all-pervading Spirit, who is also the breath of his 
soul. Where a man tries to raise himself to eminence 
by pushing and jostling all others, to achieve a 
distinction by which he prides himself to be more 
than everybody else, there he is alienated from that 
Spirit. This is why the Upanishads describe those 
who have attained the goal of human life as 
^^peacefuV^^ and as '^ at-one-with-God,^^ ^ meaning 
that they are in perfect harmony with man and 
nature, and therefore in undisturbed union with 
God. 

We have a glimpse of the same truth in the 

* Pra^antah. 2 Yuktatmanah. 



i6 SADHANA i 

teachings of Jesus when he says, "It is easier for a 
camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for 
a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven" — 
which implies that whatever we treasure for ourselves 
separates us from others; our possessions are our 
limitations. He who is bent upon accumulating 
riches is unable, with his ego continually bulging, 
to pass through the gates of comprehension of the 
spiritual world, which is the world of perfect har- 
mony; he is shut up within the narrow walls of his 
limited acquisitions. 

Hence the spirit of the teachings of Upanishad 
is: In order to find him you must embrace all. In 
the pursuit of wealth you really give up everything 
to gain a few things, and that is not the way to attain 
him who is completeness. 

Some modern philosophers of Europe, who are 
directly or indirectly indebted to the Upanishads, 
far from realising their debt, maintain that the 
Brahma of India is a mere abstraction, a negation of 
all that is in the world. In a word, that the Infinite 
Being is to be found nowhere except in metaphysics. 
It may be, that such a doctrine has been and still 
is prevalent with a section of our countrymen. But 
this is certainly not in accord with the pervading 
spirit of the Indian mind. Instead, it is the practice 
of realising and affirming the presence of the infinite 
in all things which has been its constant inspira- 
tion. 



I INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSE 17 

We are enjoined to see whatever there is in the 
world as being enveloped by God} 

1 bow to God over and over again who is in fire 
and in water ^ who permeates the whole worlds who is 
in the annual crops as well as in the perennial trees, ^ 

Can this be God abstracted from the world? In- 
stead, it signifies not merely seeing him in all things, 
but saluting him in all the objects of the world. 
The attitude of the God-conscious man of the Upan- 
ishad towards the universe is one of a deep feeling 
of adoration. His object of worship Is present every- 
where. It is the one living truth that makes all 
realities true. This truth is not only of knowledge 
but of devotion. ^Namonamah,^ — we bow to him 
everywhere, and over and over again. It is recog- 
nised in the outburst of the Rishi, who addresses 
the whole world in a sudden ecstasy of joy: Listen 
to me, ye sons of the immortal spirit, ye who live in 
the heavenly abode, I have known the Supreme Person 
whose light shines forth from beyond the darkness,^ 
Do we not find the overwhelming delight of a direct 
and positive experience where there is not the least 
trace of vagueness or passivity .^^ 

Buddha, who developed the practical side of the 
teaching of Upanishads, preached the same message 

^ Ifavasyamidam sarvam yat kincha jagatyan jagat. 

2 Yo devo'gnau y'opsu yo vifvambhuvanamavivega ya oshadhishu yo 
vanaspatishu tasmai devaya nam5namah. 

' Crinvantu vifve amritasya putra a ye divya dhamani tasthuh veda- 
hametam purusham mahantam aditya varnam tamasah parastat. 



i8 SADHANA i 

when he said, With everything, whether it is above or 
below, remote or near, visible or invisible, thou shalt pre- 
serve a relation of unlimited love without any animosity 
or without a desire to kill. To live in such a conscious- 
ness while standing or walking, sitting or lying down 
till you are asleep, is Brahma vihara, or, in other 
words, is living and moving and having your joy in the 
spirit of Brahma, 

What is that spirit? The Upanishad says, The 
being who is in his essence the light and life of all, 
who is world-conscious, is Brahma} To feel all, 
to be conscious of everything, is his spirit. We are 
immersed in his consciousness body and soul. It 
is through his consciousness that the sun attracts 
the earth; it is through his consciousness that the 
light-waves are being transmitted from planet to 
planet. 

Not only In space, but this light and life, this all- 
feeling being is in our souls} He is all-conscious in 
space, or the world of extension; and he is all- 
conscious in soul, or the world of intension. 

Thus to attain our world-consciousness, we have 
to unite our feeling with this all-pervasive infinite 
feeling. In fact, the only true human progress is 
coincident with this widening of the range of feeling. 
All our poetry, philosophy, science, art, and religion 

^ YafchayamasminnakSfe tejomayo'mrltamayah purushah sar- 
vanubhuh. 

2 Ya9chayamasnimnatmani tej5may5'mritamayah purushah sar- 
vanubhuh. 



I INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSE 19 

are serving to extend the scope of our consciousness 
towards higher and larger spheres. Man does not 
acquire rights through occupation of larger space, 
nor through external conduct, but his rights extend 
only so far as he Is real, and his reality is measured 
by the scope of his consciousness. 

We have, however, to pay a price for this attain- 
ment of the freedom of consciousness. What is the 
price .^ It is to give one's self away. Our soul can 
realise itself truly only by denying itself. The 
Upanishad says, Thou shall gain hy giving away^ 
Thou shah not covet. '^ 

In GIta we are advised to work disinterestedly, 
abandoning all lust for the result. Many outsiders 
conclude from this teaching that the conception of 
the world as something unreal lies at the root of 
the so-called disinterestedness preached In India. 
But the reverse is the truth. 

The man who aims at his own aggrandisement 
underrates everything else. Compared to his ego 
the rest of the world is unreal. Thus in order to be 
fully conscious of the reality of all, one has to be 
free himself from the bonds of personal desires. 
This discipline we have to go through to prepare 
ourselves for our social duties — for sharing the 
burdens of our fellow-beings. Every endeavour to 
attain a larger life requires of man "to gain by 
giving away, and not to be greedy." And thus to 

* Tyaktena bhunjithah. 2 y[^ gridhah. 



20 SADHANA i 

expand gradually the consciousness of one's unity 
with all is the striving of humanity. 

The Infinite in India was not a thin nonentity, 
void of all content. The Rishis of India asserted 
emphatically, "To know him in this life is to be 
true; not to know him in this life is the desolation 
of death." ^ How to know him then? "By realis- 
ing him in each and all." ^ Not only in nature but 
in the family, in society, and in the state, the more 
we realise the World-conscious in all, the better 
for us. Failing to realise it, we turn our faces to 
destruction. 

It fills me with great joy and a high hope for the 
future of humanity when I realise that there was a 
time in the remote past when our poet-prophets 
stood under the lavish sunshine of an Indian sky and 
greeted the world with the glad recognition of kin- 
dred. It was not an anthropomorphic hallucina- 
tion. It was not seeing man reflected everywhere in 
grotesquely exaggerated images, and witnessing the 
human drama acted on a gigantic scale in nature's 
arena of flitting lights and shadows. On the con- 
trary, it meant crossing the limiting barriers of the 
individual, to become more than man, to become 
one with the All. It was not a mere play of the imag- 
ination, but it was the liberation of consciousness 
from all the mystifications and exaggerations of 

* Iha chet avedit atha satyamasti, nachet iha avedit mahati vinashtih, 
2 Bhuteshu bhuteshu vichintya. 



I INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSE 21 

the self. These ancient seers felt in the serene 
depth of their mind that the same energy which 
vibrates and passes into the endless forms of the 
world manifests itself in our inner being as conscious- 
ness; and there is no break in unity. For these seers 
there was no gap in their luminous vision of per- 
fection. They never acknowledged even death 
itself as creating a chasm in the field of reality. 
They said, His reflection is death as well as immor- 
tality.^ They did not recognise any essential opposi- 
tion between life and death, and they said with ab- 
solute assurance, "It is life that is death." ^ They 
saluted with the same serenity of gladness "life in 
its aspect of appearing and in its aspect of departure" 
— That which is past is hidden in life, and that which 
is to come.^ They knew that mere appearance and 
disappearance are on the surface like waves on the 
sea, but life which is permanent knows no decay or 
diminution. 

Everything has sprung from immortal life and is 
vibrating with life,^ for life is immense J* 

This is the noble heritage from our forefathers 
waiting to be claimed by us as our own, this ideal of 
the supreme freedom of consciousness. It is not 
merely intellectual or emotional, it has an ethical 
basis, and it must be translated into action. In 



^ Yasya chhayamritam yasya mrltyuh. ^ Prano mrityuh. 

' Nam5 astu ayate nam5 astu parayate. Prane ha bhutam bhavyancha. 

* Yadidan kiiicha prana ejati nihsritam. ^ Prano virat. 



22 SADHANA I 

the Upanishad it Is said, The supreme being is all- 
pervading, therefore he is the innate good in all} 
To be truly united in knowledge, love, and service 
with all beings, and thus to realise one's self in the 
all-pervading God is the essence of goodness, and 
this is the keynote of the teachings of the Upanishads: 
Life is immense! ^ 

^ Sarvavyapi sa bhagavan tasmat sarvagatah fivah, ^ Prano virat. 



II 

SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 



23 



SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 

We have seen that it was the aspiration of ancient 
India to live and move and have its joy In Brahma, 
the all-conscious and all-pervading Spirit, by extend- 
ing Its field of consciousness over all the world. But 
that, It may be urged. Is an Impossible task for man 
to achieve. If this extension of consciousness be 
an outward process, then it is endless; it Is like 
attempting to cross the ocean after ladling out its 
water. By beginning to try to realise all, one has 
to end by realising nothing. 

But, In reality, it is not so absurd as it sounds. 
Man has every day to solve this problem of enlarg- 
ing his region and adjusting his burdens. His bur- 
dens are many, too numerous for him to carry, 
but he knows that by adopting a system he can 
lighten the weight of his load. Whenever they feel 
too complicated and unwieldy, he knows it is because 
he has not been able to hit upon the system which 
would have set everything in place and distributed 
the weight evenly. This search for system Is really 
a search for unity, for synthesis; It Is our attempt 

25 



26 SADHANA ii 

to harmonise the heterogeneous complexity of out- 
ward materials hy an inner adjustment. In the 
search we gradually become aware that to find out the 
One is to possess the All; that there, indeed, is our last 
and highest privilege. It is based on the law of that 
unity which is, if we only know it, our abiding 
strength. Its living principle is the power that is in 
truth; the truth of that unity which comprehends 
multiplicity. Facts are many, but the truth is one. 
The animal intelligence knows facts, the human 
mind has power to apprehend truth. The apple falls 
from the tree, the rain descends upon the earth — you 
can go on burdening your memory with such facts 
and never come to an end. But once you get hold of 
the law of gravitation you can dispense with the 
necessity of collecting facts ad infinitum. You have 
got at one truth which governs numberless facts. 
This discovery of a truth is pure joy to man — it is a 
liberation of his mind. For, a mere fact is like a 
blind lane, it leads only to itself — It has no beyond. 
But a truth opens up a whole horizon, it leads us to 
the infinite. That is the reason why, when a man 
like Darwin discovers some simple general truth 
about Biology, it does not stop there, but like a 
lamp shedding its light far beyond the object for 
which It was lighted, it Illumines the whole region of 
human life and thought, transcending Its original pur- 
pose. Thus we find that truth, while Investing all 
facts, Is not a mere aggregate of facts — it sur- 



II SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 27 

passes them on all sides and points to the infinite 
reality. 

As in the region of knowledge so in that of con- 
sciousness, man must clearly realise some central 
truth which will give him an outlook over the widest 
possible field. And that is the object which the 
Upanishad has in view when it says. Know thine 
own Soul, Or, in other words, realise the one great 
principle of unity that there is in every man. 

All our egoistic impulses, our selfish desires, 
obscure our true vision of the soul. For they only 
indicate our own narrow self. When we are con- 
scious of our soul, we perceive the inner being that 
transcends our ego and has its deeper affinity with 
the All. 

Children, when they begin to learn each separate 
letter of the alphabet, find no pleasure in it, because 
they miss the real purpose of the lesson; in fact, 
while letters claim our attention only in themselves 
and as isolated things, they fatigue us. They become 
a source of joy to us only when they combine into 
words and sentences and convey an idea. 

Likewise, our soul when detached and imprisoned 
within the narrow limits of a self loses its significance. 
For its very essence is unity. It can only find out 
its truth by unifying itself with others, and only 
then it has its joy. Man was troubled and he lived 
in a state of fear so long as he had not discovered 
the uniformity of law in nature; till then the world 



28 SADHANA ii 

was alien to him. The law that he discovered is 
nothing but the perception of harmony that prevails 
between reason which is of the soul of man and the 
workings of the world. This is the bond of union 
through which man is related to the world in which 
he lives, and he feels an exceeding joy when he finds 
this out, for then he realises himself in his surround- 
ings. To understand anything is to find in it some- 
thing which is our own, and it is the discovery of 
ourselves outside us which makes us glad. This 
relation of understanding is partial, but the relation 
of love is complete. In love the sense of difference 
is obliterated and the human soul fulfils its purpose 
in perfection, transcending the limits of itself and 
reaching across the threshold of the infinite. There- 
fore love is the highest bliss that man can attain to, 
for through it alone he truly knows that he is more 
than himself, and that he is at one with the All. 

This principle of unity which man has in his soul 
is ever active, establishing relations far and wide 
through literature, art, and science, society, state- 
craft, and religion. Our great Revealers are they 
who make manifest the true meaning of the soul by 
giving up self for the love of mankind. They face 
calumny and persecution, deprivation and death in 
their service of love. They live the life of the soul, 
not of the self, and thus they prove to us the ulti-- 
mate truth of humanity. We call them Mahdtmds, 
"the men of the great soul." 



II SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 29 

It is said in one of the Upanishads: It is not that 
thou lovest thy son because thou desirest htm, but thou 
love St thy son because thou desirest thine own soul} 
The meaning of this is, that whomsoever we love, in 
him we find our own soul in the highest sense. The 
final truth of our existence lies in this. Paramdtmd, 
the supreme soul, is in me, as well as in my son, 
and my joy in my son is the realisation of this truth. 
It has become quite a commonplace fact, yet it is 
wonderful to think upon, that the joys and sorrows 
of our loved ones are joys and sorrows to us — nay, 
they are more. Why so? Because in them we 
have grown larger, in them we have touched that 
great truth which comprehends the whole universe. 

It very often happens that our love for our children, 
our friends, or other loved ones, debars us from 
the further realisation of our soul. It enlarges our 
scope of consciousness, no doubt, yet it sets a limit 
to its freest expansion. Nevertheless, it is the 
first step, and all the wonder lies in this first step 
itself. It shows to us the true nature of our soul. 
From it we know, for certain, that our highest joy is 
in the losing of our egoistic self and in the uniting 
with others. This love gives us a new power and 
insight and beauty of mind to the extent of the limits 
we set around it, but ceases to do so if those limits 
lose their elasticity, and militate against the spirit 

^ Na va are putrasya kamaya putrah priy5 bhavati, atmanastu 
kamaya putrah priyo bhavati. 



30 SADHANA ii 

of love altogether; then our friendships become 
exclusive, our families selfish and inhospitable, our 
nations insular and aggressively inimical to other 
races. It is like putting a burning light within a 
sealed enclosure, which shines brightly till the poison- 
ous gases accumulate and smother the flame. Never- 
theless it has proved its truth before it dies, and 
made known the joy of freedom from the grip of 
the darkness, blind and empty and cold. 

According to the Upanishads, the key to cosmic 
consciousness, to God-consciousness, is in the con- 
sciousness of the soul. To know our soul apart 
from the self is the first step towards the realisation 
of the supreme deliverance. We must know with 
absolute certainty that essentially we are spirit. This 
we can do by winning mastery over self, by rising 
above all pride and greed and fear, by knowing that 
worldly losses and physical death can take nothing 
away from the truth and the greatness of our soul. 
The chick knows when it breaks through the self- 
centred isolation of its egg that the hard shell which 
covered it so long was not really a part of its life. 
That shell is a dead thing, it has no growth, it affords 
no glimpse whatever of the vast beyond that lies out- 
side it. However pleasantly perfect and rounded 
it may be, it must be given a blow to, it must be 
burst through and thereby the freedom of light and 
air be won, and the complete purpose of bird life be 
achieved. In Sanskrit, the bird has been called the 



II SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 31 

twice-born. So too the man who has gone through 
the ceremony of the discipline of self-restraint and 
high thinking for a period of at least twelve years; 
who has come out simple in wants, pure in heart, 
and ready to take up all the responsibilities of life in 
a disinterested largeness of spirit. He is considered 
to have had his rebirth from the blind envelopment 
of self to the freedom of soul life; to have come 
into living relation with his surroundings; to have 
become at one with the All. 

I have already warned my hearers, and must once 
more warn them against the Idea that the teachers 
of India preached a renunciation of the world and 
of self which leads only to the blank emptiness of 
negation. Their aim was the realisation of the soul, 
or, in other words, gaining the world in perfect truth. 
When Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek, for they 
shall inherit the earth," he meant this. He pro- 
claimed the truth that when man gets rid of his pride 
of self then he comes into his true inheritance. No 
more has he to fight his way into his position in the 
world; it is secure for him everywhere by the im- 
mortal right of his soul. Pride of self interferes 
with the proper function of the soul which is to realise 
itself by perfecting its union with the world and the 
world's God. 

In his sermon to Sadhu Simha Buddha says, It 
is true J Simha, that I denounce activities, but only the 
activities that lead to the evil in words, thoughts, or deeds. 



32 SADHANA ii 

It is true^ Simha, that I preach extinction^ hut only the 
extinction of pride, lust, evil thought, and ignorance, not 
that of forgiveness, love, charity, and truth. 

The doctrine of deliverance that Buddha preached 
was the freedom from the thraldom of Avidyd. 
Avidyd is the ignorance that darkens our conscious- 
ness, and tends to limit it within the boundaries of 
our personal self. It is this Avidyd, this ignorance, 
this limiting of consciousness that creates the hard 
separateness of the ego, and thus becomes the source 
of all pride and greed and cruelty incidental to self- 
seeking. When a man sleeps he is shut up within 
the narrow activities of his physical life. He lives, 
but he knows not the varied relations of his life to 
his surroundings, — therefore he knows not himself. 
So when a man lives the life of Avidyd he is confined 
within his self. It is a spiritual sleep; his conscious- 
ness is not fully awake to the highest reality that 
surrounds him, therefore he knows not the reality of 
his own soul. When he attains Bodhi, i, e. the awak- 
enment from the sleep of self to the perfection of con- 
sciousness, he becomes Buddha. 

Once I met two ascetics of a certain religious sect 
in a village of Bengal. "Can you tell me," I asked 
them, "wherein lies the special features of your 
religion?" One of them hesitated for a moment 
and answered, "It is difficult to define that." The 
other said, "No, it Is quite simple. We hold that 
we have first of all to know our own soul under the 



II SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 33 

guidance of our spiritual teacher, and when we have 
done that we can find him, who is the Supreme Soul, 
within us." "Why don't you preach your doctrine 
to all the people of the world?" I asked. "Who- 
ever feels thirsty will of himself come to the river," 
was his reply. "But then, do you find it so? Are 
they coming?" The man gave a gentle smile, and 
with an assurance which had not the least tinge of 
impatience or anxiety, he said, "They must come, 
one and all." 

Yes, he is right, this simple ascetic of rural Bengal. 
Man is indeed abroad to satisfy needs which are 
more to him than food and clothing. He is out 
to find himself. Man's history is the history of his 
journey to the unknown in quest of the realisation 
of his immortal self — his soul. Through the rise 
and fall of empires; through the building up gigantic 
piles of wealth and the ruthless scattering of them 
upon the dust; through the creation of vast bodies 
of symbols that give shape to his dreams and aspira- 
tions, and the casting of them away like the play- 
things of an outworn infancy; through his forging 
of magic keys with which to unlock the mysteries 
of creation, and through his throwing away of this 
labour of ages to go back to his workshop and 
work up afresh some new form; yes, through it all 
man is marching from epoch to epoch towards 
the fullest realisation of his soul, — the soul which 
is greater than the things man accumulates, the 



34 SADHANA ii 

deeds he accomplishes, the theories he builds; the 
soul whose onward course is never checked by death 
or dissolution. Man's mistakes and failures have 
by no means been trifling or small, they have strewn 
his path with colossal ruins; his sufferings have been 
immense, like birth-pangs for a giant child; they 
are the prelude of a fulfilment whose scope is in- 
finite. Man has gone through and is still under- 
going martyrdoms in various ways, and his institu- 
tions are the altars he has built whereto he brings 
his daily sacrifices, marvellous in kind and stu- 
pendous in quantity. All this would be absolutely 
unmeaning and unbearable if all along he did not 
feel that deepest joy of the soul within him, which 
tries its divine strength by suffering and proves its 
exhaustless riches by renunciation. Yes, they are 
coming, the pilgrims, one and all — coming to their 
true inheritance of the world; they are ever broaden- 
ing their consciousness, ever seeking a higher and 
higher unity, ever approaching nearer to the one 
central Truth which is all-comprehensive. 

Man's poverty is abysmal, his wants are endless 
till he becomes truly conscious of his soul. Till 
then, the world to him is in a state of continual 
flux — a phantasm that is and is not. For a man 
who has realised his soul there is a determinate 
centre of the universe around which all else can find 
its proper place, and from thence only can he draw 
and enjoy the blessedness of a harmonious life. 



II SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 35 

There was a time when the earth was only a 
nebulous mass whose particles were scattered far 
apart through the expanding force of heat; when 
she had not yet attained her definiteness of form 
and had neither beauty nor purpose, but only heat 
and motion. Gradually, when her vapours were con- 
densed into a unified rounded whole through a force 
that strove to bring all straggling matters under 
the control of a centre, she occupied her proper 
place among the planets of the solar system, like an 
emerald pendant in a necklace of diamonds. So with 
our soul. When the heat and motion of blind 
impulses and passions distract it on all sides, we can 
neither give nor receive anything truly. But when 
we find our centre in our soul by the power of self- 
restraint, by the force that harmonises all warring 
elements and unifies those that are apart, then all our 
isolated impressions reduce themselves to wisdom, 
and all our momentary impulses of heart find their 
completion in love; then all the petty details of our 
life reveal an infinite purpose, and all our thoughts 
and deeds unite themselves inseparably in an internal 
harmony. 

The Upanishads say with great emphasis. Know 
thou the One, the Soul} It is the bridge leading to 
the immortal being}" 

This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One 
which is in him; which is his truth, which is his 

*Tamevaikam janatha atmanam. ^Amrltasyaisha setuh. 



36 SADHANA ii 

soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the 
spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom. His desires are 
many, and madly they run after the varied objects of 
the world, for therein they have their life and fulfil- 
ment. But that which is one in him is ever seeking 
for unity — unity in knowledge, unity in love, unity 
in purposes of will; its highest joy is when it reaches 
the infinite one within its eternal unity. Hence the 
saying of the Upanishad, Only those of tranquil 
minds, and none else, can attain abiding joy, by realising 
within their souls the Being who manifests one essence 
in a multiplicity of forms} 

Through all the diversities of the world the one 
in us is threading its course towards the one in all; 
this is its nature and this is its joy. But by that 
devious path it could never reach its goal if it had 
not a light of its own by which it could catch the 
sight of what it was seeking in a flash. The vision 
of the Supreme One in our own soul is a direct and 
immediate intuition, not based on any ratiocination 
or demonstration at all. Our eyes naturally see an 
object as a whole, not by breaking it up into parts, 
but by bringing all the parts together into a unity 
with ourselves. So with the intuition of our Soul- 
consciousness, which naturally and totally realises 
its unity in the Supreme One. 

Says the Upanishad; This deity who is manifesting 

1 Ekam rupam bahudha yah karoti * * tam atmastham ye anupafy- 
anti dihrah, tesham sukham fagvatam netaresham. 



II SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 37 

himself in the activities of the universe always dwells in 
the heart of man as the supreme souL Those who realise 
him through the immediate perception of the heart 
attain immortality} 

He is Vishvakarma; that Is, In a multiplicity of 
forms and forces lies his outward manifestation in 
nature; but his Inner manifestation In our soul Is 
that which exists in unity. Our pursuit of truth in 
the domain of nature therefore is through analysis 
and the gradual methods of science, but our appre- 
hension of truth in our soul is Immediate and through 
direct intuition. We cannot attain the supreme soul 
by successive additions of knowledge acquired bit by 
bit even through all eternity, because he is one, he 
is not made up of parts; we can only know him as 
heart of our hearts and soul of our soul; we can 
only know him in the love and joy we feel when we 
give up our self and stand before him face to face. 

The deepest and the most earnest prayer that has 
ever risen from the human heart has been uttered 
in our ancient tongue: thou self -revealing one, 
reveal they self in me} We are in misery because we 
are creatures of self — the self that Is unyielding and 
narrow, that reflects no light, that Is blind to the 
infinite. Our self Is loud with its own discordant 
clamour — it Is not the tuned harp whose chords 

^ Esha devo vishvakarma mahatma sada jananam hridaye sanni- 
vlshtah. Hrida manlsha manasabhiklripto ya etad viduramritaste 
bhavanti. 

* Aviravirmayedhi. 



38 SADHANA ii 

vibrate with the music of the eternal. Sighs of 
discontent and weariness of failure, idle regrets for 
the past and anxieties for the future are troubling 
our shallow hearts because we have not found our 
souls, and the self-revealing spirit has not been 
manifest within us. Hence our cry, thou awful 
one J save me with thy smile of grace ever and evermore} 
It is a stifling shroud of death, this self-gratification, 
this insatiable greed, this pride of possession, this 
insolent alienation of heart. Rudra, thou awful 
one, rend this dark cover in twain and let the saving 
beam of thy smile of grace strike through this night of 
gloom and waken my soul. 

From unreality lead me to the real, from darkness 
to the light, from death to immortality} But how can 
one hope to have this prayer granted? For infinite 
is the distance that lies between truth and untruth, 
between death and deathlessness. Yet this measure- 
less gulf is bridged in a moment when the self- 
revealing one reveals himself in the soul. There 
the miracle happens, for there is the meeting-ground 
of the finite and infinite. Father, completely sweep 
away all my sins ! ^ For in sin man takes part with 
the finite against the infinite that is in him. It is 
the defeat of his soul by his self. It is a perilously 
losing game, in which man stakes his all to gain a 

^ Rudra yat te dakshlnam mukham tena mam pahl nityam. 
2 Asatoma sadgamaya, tamasoma jyotirgamaya, mritydrma mritanga- 
maya. 

2 Vishvanideva savitar duratani parasuva. 



II SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 39 

part. Sin is the blurring of truth which clouds the 
purity of our consciousness. In sin we lust after 
pleasures, not because they are truly desirable, but 
because the red light of our passion makes them 
appear desirable; we long for things not because they 
are great in themselves, but because our greed ex- 
aggerates them and makes them appear great. 
These exaggerations, these falsifications of the per- 
spective of things, break the harmony of our life at 
every step; we lose the true standard of values and 
are distracted by the false claims of the varied in- 
terests of life contending with one another. It is 
this failure to bring all the elements of his nature 
under the unity and control of the Supreme One 
that makes man feel the pang of his separation from 
God and gives rise to the earnest prayer, God^ 
Father^ completely sweep away all our sins} Give 
unto us that which is good,^ the good which is the 
daily bread of our souls. In our pleasures we are 
confined to ourselves, in the good we are freed and 
we belong to all. As the child in its mother's womb 
gets its sustenance through the union of its life with 
the larger life of its mother, so our soul is nourished 
only through the good which is the recognition 
of its inner kinship, the channel of its communi- 
cation with the infinite by which it is surrounded 
and fed. Hence it is said, "Blessed are they which 

^ Vishvani deva savitar duritani parasuva. 
^ Yad bhadram tanna asuva. 



40 SADHANA 



II 



do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they 
shall be filled." For righteousness is the divine 
food of the soul; nothing but this can fill him, can 
make him live the life of the infinite, can help him 
in his growth towards the eternal. We bow to thee 
from whom come the enjoyments of our life} We how 
also to thee from whom comes the good of our souL^ 
We bow to thee who art good, the highest good,^ in whom 
we are united with everything, that is, in peace and 
harmony, in goodness and love. 

Man's cry is to reach his fullest expression. It 
is this desire for self-expression that leads him to 
seek wealth and power. But he has to discover that 
accumulation is not realisation. It is the inner light 
that reveals him, not outer things. When this light 
is lighted, then in a moment he knows that Man's 
highest revelation is God's own revelation in him. 
And his cry is for this — the manifestation of his 
soul, which is the manifestation of God in his soul. 
Man becomes perfect man, he attains his fullest 
expression, when his soul realises itself in the Infinite 
being who is Avih whose very essence is expression. 

The real misery of man is in the fact that he has 
not fully come out, that he is self-obscured, lost in 
the midst of his own desires. He cannot feel him- 
self beyond his personal surroundings, his greater 
self is blotted out, his truth is unrealised. The 

* Namah sambhavaya. ^ Namah fankarayacha. 

3 Namah fivayacha, fivataraya cha. 



II SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 41 

prayer that rises up from his whole being is therefore, 
Thou, who art the spirit of manifestation, manifest 
thyself in me} This longing for the perfect expres- 
sion of his self Is more deeply inherent in man than 
his hunger and thirst for bodily sustenance, his lust 
for wealth and distinction. This prayer is not merely 
one born Individually of him; it Is in the depth of 
all things, It Is the ceaseless urging In him of the Avih, 
of the spirit of eternal manifestation. The reveal- 
ment of the Infinite In the finite, which Is the motive 
of all creation. Is not seen in Its perfection In the 
starry heavens, In the beauty of the flowers. It Is 
In the soul of man. For there will seeks its mani- 
festation In will, and freedom turns to win Its final 
prize In the freedom of surrender. 

Therefore, it Is the self of man which the great 
King of the universe has not shadowed with his 
throne — he has left it free. In his physical and 
mental organism, where man is related with nature, 
he has to acknowledge the rule of his King, but In 
his self he Is free to disown him. There our God 
must win his entrance. There he comes as a guest, 
not as a king, and therefore he has to wait till he 
is Invited. It Is the man's self from which God has 
withdrawn his commands, for there he comes to court 
our love. His armed force, the laws of nature, stand 
outside its gate, and only beauty, the messenger of 
his love, finds admission within its precincts. 

^ AVIRAVIRMAYEDHI. 



42 SADHANA ii 

It IS only in this region of will that anarchy is 
permitted; only in man's self that the discord of 
untruth and unrighteousness hold its reign; and 
things can come to such a pass that we may cry out 
in our anguish, "Such utter lawlessness could never 
prevail if there were a God!" Indeed, God has 
stood aside from our self, where his watchful patience 
knows no bounds, and where he never forces open 
the doors if shut against him. For this self of ours 
has to attain its ultimate meaning, which is the soul, 
not through the compulsion of God's power but 
through love, and thus become united with God in 
freedom. 

He whose spirit has been made one with God 
stands before man as the supreme flower of humanity. 
There man finds in truth what he is; for there the 
Avih is revealed to him in the soul of man as the 
most perfect revelation for him of God; for there 
we see the union of the supreme will with our will, 
our love with the love everlasting. 

Therefore, in our country he who truly loves God 
receives such homage from men as would be con- 
sidered almost sacrilegious in the west. We see 
in him God's wish fulfilled, the most difficult of all 
obstacles to his revealment removed, and God's 
own perfect joy fully blossoming in humanity. 
Through him we find the whole world of man over- 
spread with a divine homeliness. His life, burning 
with God's love, makes all our earthly love re- 



11 SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 43 

splendent. All the intimate associations of our 
life^ all its experience of pleasure and pain, group 
themselves around this display of the divine love, 
and from the drama that we witness in him. The 
touch of an infinite mystery passes over the trivial 
and the familiar, making it break out into ineffable 
music. The trees and the stars and the blue hills 
appear to us as symbols aching with a meaning 
which can never be uttered in words. We seem to 
watch the Master In the very act of creation of a 
new world when a man's soul draws her heavy 
curtain of self aside, when her veil is lifted and she is 
face to face with her eternal lover. 

But what Is this state .^ It is like a morning of 
spring, varied In Its life and beauty, yet one and 
entire. When a man's life rescued from distractions 
finds its unity in the soul, then the consciousness of 
the infinite becomes at once direct and natural to it 
as the light is to the flame. All the conflicts and 
contradictions of life are reconciled; knowledge, love, 
and action harmonized; pleasure and pain become 
one in beauty, enjoyment and renunciation equal in 
goodness; the breach between the finite and the 
Infinite fills with love and overflows; every moment 
carries its message of the eternal; the formless appears 
to us in the form of the flower, of the fruit; the bound- 
less takes us up in his arms as a father and walks by 
our side as a friend. It Is only the soul, the one In 
man which by its very nature can overcome all limits, 



44 SADHANA ii 

and finds its affinity with the Supreme One. While 
yet we have not attained the internal harmony, 
and the wholeness of our being, our life remains a 
life of habits. The world still appears to us as a 
machine, to be mastered where it is useful, to be 
guarded against where it is dangerous, and never 
to be known in its full fellowship with us, alike in its 
physical nature and in its spiritual life and beauty. 



Ill 

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 



45 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 

The question why there is evil in existence is the 
same as why there is imperfection, or, in other words, 
why there is creation at all. We must take it for 
granted that it could not be otherwise; that creation 
must be imperfect, must be gradual, and that it is 
futile to ask the question. Why we are? 

But this is the real question we ought to ask: 
Is this imperfection the final truth, is evil absolute 
and ultimate? The river has its boundaries, its 
banks, but is a river all banks? or are the banks the 
final facts about the river? Do not these obstruc- 
tions themselves give its water an onward motion? 
The towing rope binds a boat, but is the bondage its 
meaning? Does it not at the same time draw the 
boat forward? 

The current of the world has its boundaries, 
otherwise it could have no existence, but its purpose 
Is not shown in the boundaries which restrain It, 
but In its movement, which is towards perfection. 
The wonder Is not that there should be obstacles and 
sufferings In this world, but that there should be law 

47 



48 SADHANA III 

and order, beauty and joy, goodness and love. The 
idea of God that man has in his being is the wonder 
of all wonders. He has felt in the depths of his life 
that what appears as imperfect is the manifestation 
of the perfect; just as a man who has an ear for 
music realises the perfection of a song, while in fact 
he is only listening to a succession of notes. Man has 
found out the great paradox that what is limited is 
not imprisoned within its limits; it is ever moving, 
and therewith shedding its finitude every moment. 
In fact, imperfection is not a negation of perfect- 
ness; finitude is not contradictory to infinity: they 
are but completeness manifested in parts, infinity 
revealed within bounds. 

Pain, which is the feeling of our finiteness, is not 
a fixture in our life. It is not an end in itself, as 
joy is. To meet with it is to know that it has no 
part in the true permanence of creation. It is what 
error is in our intellectual life. To go through the 
history of the development of science is to go through 
the maze of mistakes it made current at different 
times. Yet no one really believes that science is 
the one perfect mode of disseminating mistakes. 
The progressive ascertainment of truth is the im- 
portant thing to remember in the history of science, 
not its innumerable mistakes. Error, by its nature, 
cannot be stationary; it cannot remain with truth; 
like a tramp, it must quit its lodging as soon as it 
fails to pay its score to the full. 



in THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 49 

As in intellectual error, so in evil of any other 
form, its essence is impermanence, for it cannot 
accord with the whole. Every moment it is being 
corrected by the totality of things and keeps chang- 
ing its aspect. We exaggerate its importance by 
imagining it as at a standstill. Could we collect the 
statistics of the immense amount of death and putre- 
faction happening every moment in this earth, they 
would appal us. But evil is ever moving; with 
all its incalculable immensity it does not effectually 
clog the current of our life; and we find that the 
earth, water, and air remain sweet and pure for 
living beings. All statistics consist of our attempts 
to represent statically what is in motion; and in 
the process things assume a weight in our mind 
which they have not in reality. For this reason a 
man, who by his profession is concerned with any 
particular aspect of life, is apt to magnify its pro- 
portions; in laying undue stress upon facts he loses 
his hold upon truth. A detective may have the 
opportunity of studying crimes in detail, but he loses 
his sense of their relative places in the whole social 
economy. When science collects facts to illustrate 
the struggle for existence that is going on in the 
kingdom of life, it raises a picture in our minds of 
"nature red in tooth and claw." But in these mental 
pictures we give a fixity to colours and forms which 
are really evanescent. It is like calculating the 
weight of the air on each square inch of our body 



so SADHANA in 

to prove that It must be crushingly heavy for us. 
With every weight, however, there Is an adjustment, 
and we lightly bear our burden. With the struggle 
for existence in nature there Is reciprocity. There 
is the love for children and for comrades; there Is the 
sacrifice of self, which springs from love; and this 
love Is the positive element In life. 

If we kept the search-light of our observation 
turned upon the fact of death, the world would ap- 
pear to us like a huge charnel-house; but In the world 
of life the thought of death has, we find, the least 
possible hold upon our minds. Not because It is 
the least apparent, but because It is the negative 
aspect of life; just as. In spite of the fact that we 
shut our eyelids every second. It Is the openings of 
the eyes that count. Life as a whole never takes 
death seriously. It laughs, dances and plays, it 
builds, hoards and loves in death's face. Only when 
we detach one Individual fact of death do we see its 
blankness and become dismayed. We lose sight of 
the wholeness of a life of which death is part. It is 
like looking at a piece of cloth through a microscope. 
It appears like a net; we gaze at the big holes and 
shiver in Imagination. But the truth Is, death is 
not the ultimate reality. It looks black, as the sky 
looks blue; but It does not blacken existence, just 
as the sky does not leave its stain upon the wings of 
the bird. 

When we watch a child trying to walk, we see its 



Ill THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 51 

countless failures; its successes are but few. If we 
had to limit our observation within a narrow space 
of time, the sight would be cruel. But we find that 
in spite of its repeated failures there Is an Impetus 
of joy In the child which sustains it In its seemingly 
Impossible task. We see It does not think of its falls 
so much as of its power to keep its balance though 
for only a moment. e«^=-^'^ 

Like these accidents in a child's attempts to walk, 
we meet with sufferings in various forms In our life 
every day, showing the imperfections In our knowl- 
edge and our available power, and in the application 
of our will. But if these revealed our weakness to 
us only, we should die of utter depression. When 
we select for observation a limited area of our activi- 
ties, our individual failures and miseries loom large 
in our minds; but our life leads us instinctively to 
take a wider view. It gives us an Ideal of perfec- 
tion which ever carries us beyond our present limi- 
tations. Within us we have a hope which always 
walks In front of our present narrow experience; 
It Is the undying faith in the Infinite In us; It will 
never accept any of our disabilities as a permanent 
fact; it sets no limit to its own scope; It dares to 
assert that man has oneness with God; and its wild 
dreams become true every day. 

We see the truth when we set our mind towards 
the infinite. The Ideal of truth Is not In the narrow 
present, not in our Immediate sensations, but In the 



52 SADHANA iii 

consciousness of the whole which gives us a taste of 
what we should have in what we do have. Consciously 
or unconsciously we have in our life this feeling of 
Truth which is ever larger than its appearance; for 
our life is facing the infinite, and it is in movement. 
Its aspiration is therefore infinitely more than its 
achievement, and as it goes on it finds that no reali- 
sation of truth ever leaves it stranded on the desert 
of finality, but carries it to a region beyond. Evil 
cannot altogether arrest the course of life on the 
highway and rob it of its possessions. For the 
evil has to pass on, it has to grow into good; it cannot 
stand and give battle to the All. If the least 
evil could stop anywhere indefinitely, it would 
sink deep and cut into the very roots of existence. 
As it is, man does not really believe in evil, just as he 
cannot believe that violin strings have been purposely 
made to create the exquisite torture of discordant 
notes, though by the aid of statistics it can be mathe- 
matically proved that the probability of discord is 
far greater than that of harmony, and for one who 
can play the violin there are thousands who cannot. 
The potentiality of perfection outweighs actual con- 
tradictions. No doubt there have been people who 
asserted existence to be an absolute evil, but man 
can never take them seriously. Their pessimism 
is a mere pose, either intellectual or sentimental; 
but life itself is optimistic: it wants to go on. Pes- 
simism is a form of mental dipsomania, it disdains 



Ill THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 53 

healthy nourishment, indulges In the strong drink of 
denunciation, and creates an artificial dejection which 
thirsts for a stronger draught. If existence were an 
evil, it would wait for no philosopher to prove it. 
It is like convicting a man of suicide, while all the 
time he stands before you in the flesh. Existence 
itself is here to prove that it cannot be an evil. 

An imperfection which is not all imperfection, 
but which has perfection for its Ideal, must go through 
a perpetual realisation. Thus, it is the function of 
our intellect to realise the truth through untruths, 
and knowledge Is nothing but the continually burn- 
ing up of error to set free the light of truth. Our 
will, our character, has to attain perfection by con- 
tinually overcoming evils, either inside or outside 
us, or both; our physical life is consuming bodily 
materials every moment to maintain the life fire; 
and our moral life too has its fuel to burn. This 
life process Is going on — we know It, we have felt 
it; and we have a faith which no individual instances 
to the contrary can shake, that the direction of 
humanity Is from evil to good. For we feel that 
good Is the positive element In man's nature, and in 
every age and every clime what man values most Is 
his ideal of goodness. We have known the good, 
we have loved It, and we have paid our highest 
reverence to men who have shown in their lives what 
goodness is. 

The question will be asked, What Is goodness; 



54 SADHANA iii 

what does our moral nature mean? My answer 
is, that when a man begins to have an extended 
vision of his self, when he realises that he is much 
more than at present he seems to be, he begins to 
get conscious of his moral nature. Then he grows 
aware of that which he Is yet to be, and the state 
not yet experienced by him becomes more real than 
that under his direct experience. Necessarily, his 
perspective of life changes, and his will takes the 
place of his wishes. For will is the supreme wish of 
the larger life, the life whose greater portion is out 
of our present reach, most of whose objects are not 
before our sight. Then comes the conflict of our 
lesser man with our greater man, of our wishes 
with our will, of the desire for things affecting our 
senses with the purpose that is within our heart. 
Then we begin to distinguish between what we 
immediately desire and what is good. For good is 
that which is desirable for our greater self. Thus 
the sense of goodness comes out of a truer view of 
our life, which is the connected view of the whole- 
ness of the field of life, and which takes into account 
not only what is present before us but what is not, 
and perhaps never humanly can be. Man, who is 
provident, feels for that life of his which is not yet 
existent, feels much more for that than for the life 
that is with him; therefore he is ready to sacrifice 
his present inclination for the unrealised future. In 
this he becomes great, for he realises truth. Even to 



Ill THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 55 

be efficiently selfish one has to recognise this truth, 
and has to curb his Immediate Impulses — In other 
words, has to be moral. For our moral faculty Is 
the faculty by which we know that life Is not made 
up of fragments, purposeless and discontinuous. 
This moral sense of man not only gives him the 
power to see that the self has a continuity In time, 
but It also enables him to see that he Is not true 
when he Is only restricted to his own self. He Is 
more In truth than he Is In fact. He truly belongs 
to Individuals who are not Included In his own In- 
dividuality, and whom he Is never even likely to 
know. As he has a feeling for his future self which 
is outside his present consciousness, so he has a 
feeling for his greater self which Is outside the limits 
of his personality. There Is no man who has not 
this feeling to some extent, who has never sacrificed 
his selfish desire for the sake of some other person, 
who has never felt a pleasure In undergoing some loss 
or trouble because It pleased somebody else. It Is 
a truth that man Is not a detached being, that he 
has a universal aspect; and when he recognises this, 
he becomes great. Even the most evilly-dlsposed 
selfishness has to recognise this when it seeks the 
power to do evil; for It cannot Ignore truth and 
yet be strong. So In order to claim the aid of truth, 
selfishness has to be unselfish to some extent. A 
band of robbers must be moral In order to hold to- 
gether as a band; they may rob the whole world 



56 SADHANA iii 

but not each other. To make an immoral intention 
successful, some of its weapons must be moral. 
In fact, very often it is our very moral strength which 
gives us most effectively the power to do evil, to 
exploit other individuals for our own benefit, to rob 
other people of their just rights. The life of an ani- 
mal is unmoral, for it is aware only of an immediate 
present; the life of a man can be immoral, but that 
only means that it must have a moral basis. What 
is immoral is imperfectly moral, just as what is false 
is true to a small extent, or it cannot even be false. 
Not to see is to be blind, but to see wrongly is to 
see only in an imperfect manner. Man's selfishness 
is a beginning to see some connection, some purpose 
in life; and to act in accordance with its dictates 
requires self-restraint and regulation of conduct. A 
selfish man willingly undergoes troubles for the sake 
of the self, he suffers hardship and privation without 
a murmur, simply because he knows that what is 
pain and trouble, looked at from the point of view 
of a short space of time, are just the opposite when 
seen in a larger perspective. Thus what is a loss to 
the smaller man is a gain to the greater, and vice 
versa. 

To the man who lives for an idea, for his country, 
for the good of humanity, life has an extensive mean- 
ing, and to that extent pain becomes less important 
to him. To live the life of goodness is to live the life 
of all. Pleasure is for one's own self, but goodness 



Ill THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 57 

is concerned with the happiness of all humanity 
and for all time. JFrpm the point of view of the good, 
pleasure and pain? appear in a different meaning; 
so much so, that pleasure may be shunned, and pain 
be courted in its place, and death itself be made 
welcome as giving a higher value to life. From these 
higher standpoints of a man's life, the standpoints 
of the good, pleasure and pain lose their absolute 
value. Martyrs prove it in history, and we prove 
it every day in our life in our little martyrdoms. 
When we take a pitcherful of water from the sea it 
has its weight, but when we take a dip into the sea 
itself a thousand pitchersful of water flow above 
our head, and we do not feel their weight. We have 
to carry the pitcher of self with our strength; and so, 
while on the plane of selfishness pleasure and pain 
have their full weight, on the moral plane they are 
so much lightened that the man who has reached it 
appears to us almost superhuman in his patience 
under crushing trials, and his forbearance in the 
face of malignant persecution. 

To live in perfect goodness is to realise one's life 
in the infinitive. This is the most comprehensive 
view of life which we can have by our inherent 
power of the moral vision of the wholeness of life. 
And the teaching of Buddha is to cultivate this 
moral power to the highest extent, to know that our 
field of activities is not bound to the plane of our 
narrow self. This is the vision of the heavenly 



58 SADHANA iii 

kingdom of Christ. When we attain to that uni- 
versal life, which is the moral life, we become freed 
from bonds of pleasure and pain, and the place 
vacated by our self becomes filled with an unspeak- 
able joy which springs from measureless love. In this 
state the soul's activity is all the more heightened, 
only its motive power is not from desires, but in its 
own joy. This is the Karma-yoga of the Gita, the 
way to become one with the infinite activity by 
the exercise of the activity of disinterested good- 
ness. 

When Buddha meditated upon the way of releasing 
mankind from the grip of misery he came to this 
truth: that when man attains his highest end by 
merging the individual in the universal, he becomes 
free from the thraldom of pain. Let us consider 
this point more fully. 

A student of mine once related to me his adventure 
in a storm, and complained that all the time he 
was troubled with the feeling that this great com- 
motion in nature behaved to him as if he were no 
more than a mere handful of dust. That he was a 
distinct personality with a will of his own had not 
the least influence upon what was happening. 

I said, "If consideration for our individuality 
could sway nature from her path, then it would be 
the individuals who would suffer most." 

But he persisted In his doubt, saying that there 
was this fact which could not be ignored — the feeling 



Ill THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 59 

that I am. The "I" In us seeks for a relation which 
is Individual to it. 

I replied that the relation of the " I " Is with some- 
thing which is "not-L " So we must have a medium 
which Is common to both, and we must be absolutely 
certain that it is the same to the "I" as it is to the 
"not-L" 

This Is what needs repeating here. We have to 
keep in mind that our individuality by its nature Is 
impelled to seek for the universal. Our body can 
only die If it tries to eat Its own substance, and our 
eye loses the meaning of its function if it can only 
see Itself. 

Just as we find that the stronger the imagination 
the less is it merely Imaginary and the more Is it In 
harmony with truth, so we see the more vigorous 
our Individuality the more does it widen towards the 
universal. For the greatness of a personality Is not 
in itself but in its content, which Is universal, just as 
the depth of a lake is judged not by the size of its 
cavity but by the depth of Its water. 

So, if it is a truth that the yearning of our nature 
Is for reality, and that our personality cannot be 
happy with a fantastic universe of its own creation, 
then it is clearly best for It that our will can only 
deal with things by following their law, and cannot 
do with them just as it pleases. This unyielding 
sureness of reality sometimes crosses our will, and 
very often leads us to disaster, just as the firmness of 



6o SADHANA in 

the earth invariably hurts the falHng child who is 
learning to walk. Nevertheless it is the same firm- 
ness that hurts him which makes his walking possible. 
Once, while passing under a bridge, the mast of my 
boat got stuck in one of its girders. If only for a 
moment the mast would have bent an inch or two, 
or the bridge raised its back like a yawning cat, or 
the river given in, it would have been all right with 
me. But they took no notice of my helplessness. 
That is the very reason why I could make use of the 
river, and sail upon it with the help of the mast, and 
that is why, when its current was inconvenient, I 
could rely upon the bridge. Things are what they 
are, and we have to know them if we would deal with 
them, and knowledge of them is possible because our 
wish is not their law. This knowledge is a joy to us, 
for the knowledge is one of the channels of our rela- 
tion with the things outside us; it is making them 
our own, and thus widening the limit of our self. 

At every step we have to take into account others 
than ourselves. For only in death are we alone. A 
poet is a true poet when he can make his personal 
idea joyful to all men, which he could not do if he 
had not a medium common to all his audience. This 
common language has its own law which the poet 
must discover and follow, by doing which he becomes 
true and attains poetical immortality. 

We see then that man's individuality is not his 
highest truth; there is that in him which is universal. 



Ill THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 6i 

If he were made to live in a world where his own 
self was the only factor to consider, then that would 
be the worst prison imaginable to him, for man's 
deepest joy is in growing greater and greater by 
more and more union with the all. This, as we 
have seen, would be an impossibility if there were no 
law common to all. Only by discovering the law 
and following it, do we become great, do we realise 
the universal; while, so long as our individual desires 
are at conflict with the universal law, we suffer pain 
and are futile. 

There was a time when we prayed for special 
concessions, we expected that the laws of nature 
should be held in abeyance for our own convenience. 
But now we know better. We know that law cannot 
be set aside, and in this knowledge we have become 
strong. For this law is not something apart from 
us; it is our own. The universal power which Is 
manifested in the universal law is one with our own 
power. It will thwart us where we are small, where 
we are against the current of things; but it will 
help us where we are great, where we are in unison 
with the all. Thus, through the help of science, as 
we come to know more of the laws of nature, we 
gain in power; we tend to attain a universal body. 
Our organ of sight, our organ of locomotion, our 
physical strength becomes world-wide; steam and 
electricity become our nerve and muscle. Thus we 
find that, just as throughout our bodily organisation 



62 SADHANA iii 

there is a principle of relation hy virtue of which we 
can call the entire body our own, and can use it as 
such, so all through the universe there is that principle 
of uninterrupted relation hy virtue of which we can 
call the whole world our extended body and use it 
accordingly. And in this age of science it is our 
endeavour fully to establish our claim to our world- 
self. We know all our poverty and sufferings are 
owing to our inability to realise this legitimate claim 
of ours. Really, there is no limit to our powers, 
for we are not outside the universal power which 
is the expression of universal law. We are on our 
way to overcome disease and death, to conquer 
pain and poverty; for through scientific knowledge 
we are ever on our way to realise the universal in its 
physical aspect. And as we make progress we find 
that pain, disease, and poverty of power are not 
absolute, but that it is only the want of adjustment 
of our individual self to our universal self which 
gives rise to them. 

It is the same with our spiritual life. When the 
individual man in us chafes against the lawful rule 
of the universal man we become morally small, and 
we must suffer. In such a condition our successes 
are our greatest failures, and the very fulfilment of 
our desires leaves us poorer. We hanker after special 
gains for ourselves, we want to enjoy privileges 
which none else can share with us. But everything 
that is absolutely special must keep up a perpetual 



Ill THE PROBLEM OF EVIL S'}, 

warfare with what is general. In such a state of 
civil war man always lives behind barricades, and 
in any civilisation which is selfish our homes are not 
real homes, but artificial barriers around us. Yet 
we complain that we are not happy, as if there were 
something inherent in the nature of things to make 
us miserable. The universal spirit is waiting to 
crown us with happiness, but our individual spirit 
would not accept it. It is our life of the self that 
causes conflicts and complications everywhere, upsets 
the normal balance of society and gives rise to miser- 
ies of all kinds. It brings things to such a pass that to 
maintain order we have to create artificial coercions 
and organised forms of tyranny, and tolerate infernal 
institutions in our midst, whereby at every moment 
humanity is humiliated. 

We have seen that in order to be powerful we 
have to submit to the laws of the universal forces, 
and to realise in practice that they are our own. 
So, in order to be happy, we have to submit our 
individual will to the sovereignty of the universal 
will, and to feel in truth that it is our own will. 
When we reach that state wherein the adjustment of 
the finite in us to the infinite is made perfect, then 
pain itself becomes a valuable asset. It becomes a 
measuring rod with which to gauge the true value of 
our joy. 

The most important lesson that man can learn 
from his life is not that there is pain in this world, 



64 SADHANA iii 

but that it depends upon him to turn it into good 
account, that it is possible for him to transmute it 
into joy. That lesson has not been lost altogether 
to us, and there is no man living who would willingly 
be deprived of his right to suffer pain, for that is 
his right to be a man. One day the wife of a poor 
labourer complained bitterly to me that her eldest 
boy was going to be sent away to a rich relative's 
house for part of the year. It was the implied kind 
intention of trying to relieve her of her trouble that 
gave her the shock, for a mother's trouble is a 
mother's own by her inalienable right of love, and 
she was not going to surrender it to any dictates of 
expediency. Man's freedom is never in being saved 
troubles, but it is the freedom to take trouble for his 
own good, to make the trouble an element in his 
joy. It can be made so only when we realise that 
our individual self is not the highest meaning of our 
being, that in us we have the world-man who is 
immortal, who is not afraid of death or sufferings, 
and who looks upon pain as only the other side of 
joy. He who has realised this knows that it is pain 
which is our true wealth as imperfect beings, and 
has made us great and worthy to take our seat with 
the perfect. He knows that we are not beggars; 
that it is the hard coin which must be paid for every- 
thing valuable in this life, for our power, our wisdom, 
our love; that in pain is symbolised the infinite 
possibility of perfection, the eternal unfolding of 



Ill THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 65 

joy; and the man who loses all pleasure in accepting 
pain sinks down and down to the lowest depth of 
penury and degradation. It is only when we invoke 
the aid of pain for our self-gratification that she 
becomes evil and takes her vengeance for the insult 
done to her by hurling us into misery. For she is 
the vestal virgin consecrated to the service of the 
immortal perfection, and when she takes her true 
place before the altar of the infinite she casts off her 
dark veil and bares her face to the beholder as a 
revelation of supreme joy. 



IV 

THE PROBLEM OF SELF 



67 



THE PROBLEM OF SELF 

At one pole of my being I am one with stocks and 
stones. There I have to acknowledge the rule of 
universal law. That is where the foundation of my 
existence lies, deep down below. Its strength lies in 
its being held firm in the clasp of the comprehensive 
world, and in the fullness of its community with all 
things. 

But at the other pole of my being I am separate 
from all. There I have broken through the cordon 
of equality and stand alone as an individual. I am 
absolutely unique, I am I, I am incomparable. The 
whole weight of the universe cannot crush out this 
individuality of mine. I maintain it in spite of the 
tremendous gravitation of all things. It is small in 
appearance but great in reality. For it holds its 
own against the forces that would rob it of its dis- 
tinction and make it one with the dust. 

This is the superstructure of the self which rises 
from the indeterminate depth and darkness of its 
foundation into the open, proud of its isolation, 
proud of having given shape to a single individual 

69 



70 SADHANA iv 

idea of the architect's which has no duplicate in the 
whole universe. If this individuality be demolished, 
then though no material be lost, not an atom de- 
stroyed, the creative joy which was crystallised therein 
is gone. We are absolutely bankrupt if we are de- 
prived of this specialty, this individuality, which is 
the only thing we can call our own; and which, if 
lost, is also a loss to the whole world. It is most 
valuable because it is not universal. And therefore 
only through it can we gain the universe more truly 
than if we were lying within its breast unconscious 
of our distinctiveness. The universal is ever seeking 
its consummation in the unique. And the desire we 
have to keep our uniqueness intact is really the de- 
sire of the universe acting in us. It is our joy of the 
infinite in us that gives us our joy in ourselves. 

That this separateness of self is considered by man 
as his most precious possession is proved by the 
sufferings he undergoes and the sins he commits for 
its sake. But the consciousness of separation has 
come from the eating of the fruit of knowledge. It 
has led man to shame and crime and death; yet it is 
dearer to him than any paradise where the self lies, 
securely slumbering in perfect innocence in the womb 
of mother nature. 

It is a constant striving and suffering for us to 
maintain the separateness of this self of ours. And 
in fact it is this suffering which measures its value. 
One side of the value is sacrifice, which represents 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF 71 

how much the cost has been. The other side of It 
Is the attainment, which represents how much has 
been gained. If the self meant nothing to us but 
pain and sacrifice, It could have no value for us, and 
on no account would we willingly undergo such sacri- 
fice. In such case there could be no doubt at all 
that the highest object of humanity would be the 
annihilation of self. 

But If there Is a corresponding gain, If It does 
not end in a void but In a fullness, then It Is clear 
that Its negative qualities. Its very sufferings and 
sacrifices, make It all the more precious. That it Is 
so has been proved by those who have realised the 
positive significance of self, and have accepted its 
responsibilities with eagerness and undergone sacri- 
fices without flinching. 

With the foregoing Introduction it will be easy 
for me to answer the question once asked by one of 
my audience as to whether the annihilation of self 
has not been held by India as the supreme goal of 
humanity.^ 

In the first place we must keep In mind the fact 
that man is never literal In the expression of his 
Ideas, except In matters most trivial. Very often 
man's words are not a language at all, but merely a 
vocal gesture of the dumb. They may indicate, 
but do not express his thoughts. The more vital his 
thoughts the more have his words to be explained 
by the context of his life. Those who seek to know 



72 SADHANA iv 

his meaning by the aid of the dictionary only technic- 
ally reach the house, for they are stopped by the 
outside wall and find no entrance to the hall. This 
is the reason why the teachings of our greatest 
prophets give rise to endless disputations when we 
try to understand them by following their words and 
not by realising them In our own lives. The men 
who are cursed with the gift of the literal mind are 
the unfortunate ones who are always busy with their 
nets and neglect the fishing. 

It is not only in Buddhism and the Indian religions, 
but in Christianity too, that the Ideal of selflessness 
is preached with all fervour. In the last the symbol 
of death has been used for expressing the Idea of 
man's deliverance from the life which Is not true. 
This Is the same as Nirvana, the symbol of the 
extinction of the lamp. 

In the typical thought of India It is held that the 
true deliverance of man Is the deliverance from 
avidyd, from Ignorance. It Is not In destroying 
anything that Is positive and real, for that cannot be 
possible, but that which is negative, which obstructs 
our vision of truth. When this obstruction, which 
is Ignorance, is removed, then only Is the eyelid 
drawn up which Is no loss to the eye. 

It is our ignorance which makes us think that our 
self, as self. Is real, that It has Its complete meaning 
in itself. When we take that wrong view of self then 
we try to live In such a manner as to make self the 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF 73 

ultimate object of our life. Then are we doomed to 
disappointment like the man who tries to reach his 
destination by firmly clutching the dust of the 
road. Our self has no means of holding us, for its 
own nature is to pass on; and by clinging to this 
thread of self which is passing through the loom of 
life we cannot make it serve the purpose of the cloth 
into which it is being woven. When a man, with 
elaborate care, arranges for an enjoyment of the 
self, he lights a fire but has no dough to make his 
bread with; the fire flares up and consumes itself to 
extinction, like an unnatural beast that eats its own 
progeny and dies. 

In an unknown language the words are tyrannically 
prominent. They stop us but say nothing. To be 
rescued from this fetter of words we must rid our- 
selves of the avidyd, our ignorance, and then our 
mind will find its freedom in the inner idea. But it 
would be foolish to say that our ignorance of the 
language can be dispelled only by the destruction of 
the words. No, when the perfect knowledge comes, 
every word remains in its place, only they do not 
bind us to themselves, but let us pass through them 
and lead us to the idea which is emancipation. 

Thus it is only avidyd which makes the self our 
fetter by making us think that it is an end in itself, 
and by preventing our seeing that it contains the 
idea that transcends its limits. That is why the wise 
man comes and says, "Set yourselves free from the 



74 SADHANA iv 

avidyd; know your true soul and be saved from the 
grasp of the self which imprisons you." 

We gain our freedom when we attain our truest 
nature. The man who is an artist finds his artistic 
freedom when he finds his ideal of art. Then is he 
freed from laborious attempts at imitation, from the 
goadings of popular approbation. It is the function 
of religion not to destroy our nature but to fulfil it. 

The Sanskrit word dharma which is usually trans- 
lated into English as religion has a deeper meaning in 
our language. Dharma is the innermost nature, 
the essence, the implicit truth, of all things. Dharma 
is the ultimate purpose that is working in our self. 
When any wrong is done we say that dharma is 
violated, meaning that the lie has been given to our 
true nature. 

But this dharma, which is the truth in us, is not 
apparent, because it is inherent. So much so, that 
it has been held that sinfulness is the nature of man, 
and only by the special grace of God can a particular 
person be saved. This is like saying that the nature 
of the seed is to remain enfolded within its shell, 
and it is only by some special miracle that it can be 
grown into a tree. But do we not know that the 
appearance of the seed contradicts its true nature .'^ 
When you submit it to chemical analysis you may 
find in it carbon and proteid and a good many other 
things, but not the idea of a branching tree. Only 
when the tree begins to take shape do you come 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF 75 

to see Its dharma, and then you can affirm without 
doubt that the seed which has been wasted and al- 
lowed to rot in the ground has been thwarted in 
its dharma, in the fulfilment of its true nature. In 
the history of humanity we have known the living 
seed in us to sprout. We have seen the great pur- 
pose in us taking shape in the lives of our greatest 
men, and have felt certain that though there are 
numerous individual lives that seem ineffectual, 
still it is not their dharma to remain barren; but it 
is for them to burst their cover and transform them- 
selves into a vigorous spiritual shoot, growing up 
into the air and light, and branching out in all 
directions. 

The freedom of the seed is in the attainment of 
its dharma, its nature and destiny of becoming a 
tree; it is the non-accomplishment which is its 
prison. The sacrifice by which a thing attains its 
fulfilment is not a sacrifice which ends in death; it 
is the casting-off of bonds which wins freedom. 

When we know the highest ideal of freedom 
which a man has, we know his dharma, the essence 
of his nature, the real meaning of his self. At first 
sight it seems that man counts that as freedom by 
which he gets unbounded opportunities of self- 
gratification and self-aggrandisement. But surely 
this is not borne out by history. Our revelatory 
men have always been those who have lived the life 
of self-sacrifice. The higher nature in man always 



^e SADHANA IV 

seeks for something which transcends itself and yet 
is its deepest truth; which claims all its sacrifice, 
yet makes this sacrifice its own recompense. This 
is man's dharma, man's religion, and man's self is 
the vessel which is to carry this sacrifice to the altar. 

We can look at our self in its two difi'erent aspects. 
The self which displays itself, and the self which 
transcends itself and thereby reveals its own mean- 
ing. To display itself it tries to be big, to stand upon 
the pedestal of its accumulations, and to retain 
everything to itself. To reveal itself it gives up 
everything it has, thus becoming perfect like a 
flower that has blossomed out from the bud, pouring 
from its chalice of beauty all its sweetness. 

The lamp contains its oil, which it holds securely 
in its close grasp and guards from the least loss. 
Thus is it separate from all other objects around it 
and is miserly. But when lighted it finds its meaning 
at once; its relation with all things far and near is 
established, and it freely sacrifices its fund of oil to 
feed the flame. 

Such a lamp is our self. So long as it hoards its 
possessions it keeps itself dark, its conduct contra- 
dicts its true purpose. When it finds illumination 
it forgets itself in a moment, holds the light high, 
and serves it with everything it has; for therein is 
its revelation. This revelation is the freedom which 
Buddha preached. He asked the lamp to give up 
its oil. But purposeless giving up is a still darker 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF tj 

poverty which he never could have meant. The 
lamp must give up its oil to the light and thus set 
free the purpose it has in its hoarding. This is 
emancipation. The path Buddha pointed out was 
not merely the practice of self-abnegation, but the 
widening of love. And therein lies the true meaning 
of Buddha's preaching. 

When we find that the state of Nirvana preached 
by Buddha is through love, then we know for certain 
that Nirvana is the highest culmination of love. 
For love is an end unto itself. Everything else 
raises the question "Why.^*" in our mind, and we 
require a reason for it. But when we say, "I love," 
then there is no room for the "why"; it is the final 
answer in itself. 

Doubtless, even selfishness impels one to give 
away. But the selfish man does it on compulsion. 
That is like plucking fruit when it is unripe; you 
have to tear it from the tree and bruise the branch. 
But when a man loves, giving becomes a matter of 
joy to him, like the tree's surrender of the ripe fruit. 
All our belongings assume a weight by the ceaseless 
gravitation of our selfish desires; we cannot easily 
cast them away from us. They seem to belong to 
our very nature, to stick to us as a second skin, and 
we bleed as we detach them. But when we are 
possessed by love, its force acts in the opposite 
direction. The things that closely adhered to us 
lose their adhesion and weight, and we find that 



78 SADHANA iv 

they are not of us. Far from being a loss to give 
them away, we find in that the fulfilment of our 
being. 

Thus we find in perfect love the freedom of our 
self. That only which is done for love is done freely, 
however much pain it may cause. Therefore work- 
ing for love is freedom in action. This is the meaning 
of the teaching of disinterested work in the Glta. 

The Gita says action we must have, for only in 
action do we manifest our nature. But this mani- 
festation is not perfect so long as our action is not 
free. In fact, our nature is obscured by work done 
by the compulsion of want or fear. The mother 
reveals herself in the service of her children, so our 
true freedom is not the freedom from action but 
freedom in action, which can only be attained in the 
work of love. 

God's manifestation is in his work of creation, 
and it is said in the Upanishad, Knowledge, power, 
and action are of his nature; ^ they are not imposed 
upon him from outside. Therefore his work is his 
freedom, and in his creation he realises himself. 
The same thing is said elsewhere in other words: 
From joy does spring all this creation, by joy is it 
maintained, towards joy does it progress, and into joy 
does it enter? It means that God's creation has 

*"Svabhaviki jnana bala kriyacha." 

^Ar.andadhyeva khalvimani bhutani jayante, anandena jatani 
jivanti, anandamprayantyabhisamvifanti. 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF 79 

not Its source in any necessity; it comes from his 
fullness of joy; it is his love that creates, therefore 
in creation is his own revealment. 

The artist who has a joy In the fullness of his 
artistic idea objectifies it and thus gains it more fully 
by holding it afar. It is joy which detaches ourselves 
from us, and then gives it form in creations of love 
in order to make it more perfectly our own. Hence 
there must be this separation, not a separation of 
repulsion but a separation of love. Repulsion has 
only the one element, the element of severance. 
But love has two, the element of severance, which 
is only an appearance, and the element of union 
which Is the ultimate truth. Just as when theiather 
tosses his child up from his arms It has the appear- 
ance of rejection but its truth is quite the reverse. 

So we must know that the meaning of our self is 
not to be found in its separateness from God and 
others, but in the ceaseless realisation of yoga, of 
union; not on the side of the canvas where It is 
blank, but on the side where the picture is being 
painted. 

This is the reason why the separateness of our 
self has been described by our philosophers as mdyd, 
as an illusion, because It has no intrinsic reality of 
its own. It looks perilous; It raises its isolation to 
a giddy height and casts a black shadow upon the 
fair face of existence; from the outside It has an 
aspect of a sudden disruption, rebellious and de- 



8o SADHANA iv 

structive; it is proud, domineering and wayward; 
it is ready to rob the world of all its wealth to gratify 
its craving of a moment; to pluck with a reckless, 
cruel hand all the plumes from the divine bird of 
beauty to deck its ugliness for a day; indeed man's 
legend has it that it bears the black mark of dis- 
obedience stamped on its forehead for ever; but still 
all this Is mdydy envelopment of avidyd; it is the 
mist, it is not the sun; it is the black smoke that 
presages the fire of love. 

Imagine some savage who, in his Ignorance, thinks 
that it Is the paper of the banknote that has the 
magic, by virtue of which the possessor of it gets 
all he wants. He piles up the papers, hides them, 
handles them in all sorts of absurd ways, and then 
at last, wearied by his efforts, comes to the sad 
conclusion that they are absolutely worthless, only 
fit to be thrown into the fire. But the wise man 
knows that the paper of the banknote Is all mdydy 
and until it is given up to the bank it is futile. It 
is only avidyd, our ignorance, that makes us believe 
that the separateness of our self like the paper of 
the banknote is precious in itself, and by acting on 
this belief our self is rendered valueless. It is only 
when the avidyd is removed that this very self comes 
to us with a wealth which is priceless. For He 
manifests Himself in forms which His joy assumes} 
These forms are separate from Him, and the value 

^ Anandarupamamritam yadvibhatl. 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF 8i 

that these forms have is only what his joy has 
imparted to them. When we transfer back these 
forms into that original joy, which is love, then we 
cash them in the bank and we find their truth. 

When pure necessity drives man to his work it 
takes an accidental and contingent character, it 
becomes a mere makeshift arrangement; it is deserted 
and left in ruins when necessity changes its course. 
But when his work is the outcome of joy, the forms 
that it takes have the elements of immortality. The 
immortal in man imparts to it its own quality of 
permanence. 

Our self, as a form of God's joy, is deathless. 
For his joy is amritam, eternal. This it is in us 
which makes us sceptical of death, even when the 
fact of death cannot be doubted. In reconcilement 
of this contradiction in us we come to the truth that 
in the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. 
We know that the life of a soul, which is finite in its 
expression and infinite in its principle, must go 
through the portals of death in its journey to realise 
the infinite. It is death which is monistic, it has no 
life in it. But life is dualistic; it has an appearance 
as well as truth; and death is that appearance, that 
mdyd, which is an inseparable companion to life. 
Our self to live must go through a continual change 
and growth of form, which may be termed a con- 
tinual death and a continual life going on at the 
same time. It is really courting death when we 



82 SADHANA iv 

refuse to accept death; when we wish to give the form 
of the self some fixed changelessness; when the 
self feels no Impulse which urges It to grow out of 
itself; when it treats Its limits as final and acts 
accordingly. Then comes our teacher's call to die 
to this death; not a call to annihilation but to eternal 
life. It Is the extinction of the lamp In the morning 
light; not the abolition of the sun. It Is really asking 
us consciously to give effect to the Innermost wish 
that we have In the depths of our nature. 

We have a dual set of desires In our being, which 
it should be our endeavour to bring Into a harmony. 
In the region of our physical nature we have one 
set of which we are conscious always. We wish to 
enjoy our food and drink, we hanker after bodily 
pleasure and comfort. These desires are self-centred;, 
they are solely concerned with their respective 
impulses. The wishes of our palate often run counter 
to what our stomach can allow. 

But we have another set, which Is the desire of 
our physical system as a whole, of which we are 
usually unconscious. It Is the wish for health. 
This is always doing Its work, mending and repairing, 
making new adjustments In cases of accident, and 
skilfully restoring the balance wherever disturbed. 
It has no concern with the fulfilment of our Immedi- 
ate bodily desires, but it goes beyond the present 
time. It is the principle of our physical wholeness, 
it links our life with Its past and its future and 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF 83 

maintains the unity of its parts. He who is wise 
knows it, and makes his other physical wishes 
harmonise with it. 

We have a greater body which is the social body. 
Society is an organism, of which we as parts have 
our individual wishes. We want our own pleasure 
and licence. We want to pay less and gain more 
than anybody else. This causes scramblings and 
fights. But there is that other wish in us which does 
its work in the depths of the social being. It is the 
wish for the welfare of the society. It transcends 
the limits of the present and the personal. It is 
on the side of the infinite. 

He who is wise tries to harmonise the wishes that 
seek for self-gratification with the wish for the social 
good, and only thus can he realise his higher self. 

In its finite aspect the self is conscious of its sepa- 
rateness, and there it is ruthless in its attempt to 
have more distinction than all others. But in its 
infinite aspect its wish is to gain that harmony which 
leads to its perfection and not its mere aggrandise- 
ment. 

The emancipation of our physical nature is in 
attaining health, of our social being in attaining 
goodness, and of our self in attaining love. This 
last is what Buddha describes as extinction — the 
extinction of selfishness — which is the function of 
love, and which does not lead to darkness but to 
illumination. This is the attainment of bodhi, or the 



84 SADHANA iv 

true awakening; it is the revealing in us of the 
infinite joy by the light of love. 

The passage of our self is through its selfhood, 
which is independent, to its attainment of soul, 
which is harmonious. This harmony can never be 
reached through compulsion. So our will, in the 
history of its growth, must come through independ- 
ence and rebellion to the ultimate completion. We 
must have the possibility of the negative form of 
freedom, which is licence, before we can attain the 
positive freedom, which is love. 

This negative freedom, the freedom of self-will, 
can turn its back upon its highest realisation, but it 
cannot cut itself away from it altogether, for then it 
will lose its own meaning. Our self-will has freedom 
up to a certain extent; it can know what it is to 
break away from the path, but it cannot continue in 
that direction indefinitely. For we are finite on our 
negative side. We must come to an end in our evil 
doing, in our career of discord. For evil is not 
infinite, and discord cannot be an end in itself. 
Our will has freedom in order that it may find out 
that its true course is towards goodness and love. 
For goodness and love are infinite, and only in the 
infinite is the perfect realisation of freedom possible. 
So our will can be free not towards the limitations 
of our self, not where it is mdyd and negation, but 
towards the unlimited, where is truth and love. 
Our freedom cannot go against its own principle of 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF 85 

freedom and yet be free; it cannot commit suicide 
and yet live. We cannot say that we should have 
infinite freedom to fetter ourselves, for the fettering 
ends the freedom. 

So in the freedom of our will, we have the same 
dualism of appearance and truth — our self-will is 
only the appearance of freedom and love is the truth. 
When we try to make this appearance independent 
of truth, then our attempt brings misery and proves 
its own futility in the end. Everything has this 
dualism of mdyd and satyam, appearance and truth. 
Words are mdyd where they are merely sounds and 
finite, they are satyam where they are ideas and 
infinite. Our self is mdyd where it is merely in- 
dividual and finite, where it considers its separateness 
as absolute; it is satyam where it recognises its 
essence in the universal and infinite, in the supreme 
self, in paramdtman. This is what Christ means 
when he says, "Before Abraham was I am." This 
is the eternal / am that speaks through the / am 
that is in me. The individual / am attains its 
perfect end when it realises its freedom of harmony 
in the infinite / am. Then is It mukti, its deliver- 
ance from the thraldom of mdyd, of appearance, 
which springs from avidyd, from ignorance; its eman- 
cipation in cdntam civam advaitam, In the perfect 
repose in truth. In the perfect activity in goodness, 
and In the perfect union In love. 

Not only in our self but also in nature is there 



86 SADHANA iv 

this separateness from God, which has been described 
as mdyd by our philosophers, because the separate- 
ness does not exist by itself, it does not limit God's 
infinity from outside. It is his own will that has 
imposed limits to itself, just as the chess-player 
restricts his will with regard to the moving of the 
chessmen. The player willingly enters into definite 
relations with each particular piece and realises the 
joy of his power by these very restrictions. It is 
not that he cannot move the chessmen just as he 
pleases, but if he does so then there can be no play. 
If God assumes his role of omnipotence, then his 
creation is at an end and his power loses all its mean- 
ing. For power to be a power must act within limits. 
God's water must be water, his earth can never be 
other than earth. The law that has made them water 
and earth is his own law by which he has separated 
the play from the player, for therein the joy of the 
player consists. 

As by the limits of law nature is separated from 
God, so it is the limits of its egoism which separates 
the self from him. He has willingly set limits to 
his will, and has given us mastery over the little 
world of our own. It is like a father's settling upon 
his son some allowance within the limit of which he 
is free to do what he likes. Though it remains a 
portion of the father's own property, yet he frees it 
from the operation of his own will. The reason of it 
is that the will, which is love's will and therefore free, 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF 87 

can have its joy only in a union with another free will. 
The tyrant who must have slaves looks upon them as 
instruments of his purpose. It is the conscious- 
ness of his own necessity which makes him crush 
the will out of them, to make his self-interest ab- 
solutely secure. This self-interest cannot brook 
the least freedom in others, because it is not itself 
free. The tyrant is really dependent on his slaves, 
and therefore he tries to make them completely use- 
ful by making them subservient to his own will. 
But a lover must have two wills for the realisation of 
his love, because the consummation of love is in har- 
mony, the harmony between freedom and freedom. 
So God's love from which our self has taken form 
has made it separate from God; and it is God's love 
which again establishes a reconciliation and unites 
God with our self through the separation. That is 
why our self has to go through endless renewals. 
For in its career of separateness it cannot go on for 
ever. Separateness is the finitude where it finds its 
barriers to come back again and again to its infinite 
source. Our self has ceaselessly to cast off its age, re- 
peatedly shed its limits in oblivion and death, in order 
to realise its immortal youth. Its personality must 
merge in the universal time after time, in fact pass 
through it every moment, ever to refresh its individual 
life. It must follow the eternal rhythm and touch the 
fundamental unity at every step, and thus maintain 
its separation balanced in beauty and strength. 



88 SADHANA iv 

The play of life and death we see everywhere — 
this transmutation of the old into the new. The day 
comes to us every morning, naked and white, fresh as 
a flower. But we know it is old. It is age itself. 
It is that very ancient day which took up the new- 
born earth in its arms, covered it with its white 
mantle of light, and sent it forth on its pilgrimage 
among the stars. 

Yet its feet are untired and its eyes undimmed. 
It carries the golden amulet of ageless eternity, at 
whose touch all wrinkles vanish from the forehead of 
creation. In the very core of the world's heart 
stands immortal youth. Death and decay cast over 
its face momentary shadows and pass on; they leave 
no marks of their steps — and truth remains fresh 
and young. 

This old, old day of our earth is born again and 
again every morning. It comes back to the original 
refrain of its music. If its march were the march of 
an infinite straight line, if it had not the awful pause 
of its plunge in the abysmal darkness and its repeated 
rebirth in the life of the endless beginning, then it 
would gradually soil and bury truth with its dust 
and spread ceaseless aching over the earth under its 
heavy tread. Then every moment would leave its 
load of weariness behind, and decrepitude would 
reign supreme on its throne of eternal dirt. 

But every morning the day is reborn among the 
newly-blossomed flowers with the same message 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF 89 

retold and the same assurance renewed that death 
eternally dies, that the waves of turmoil are on the 
surface, and that the sea of tranquillity is fathomless. 
The curtain of night is drawn aside and truth emerges 
without a speck of dust on its garment, without a 
furrow of age on its lineaments. 

We see that he who is before everything else is 
the same to-day. Every note of the song of creation 
comes fresh from his voice. The universe is not a 
mere echo, reverberating from sky to sky, like a 
homeless wanderer — the echo of an old song sung 
once for all in the dim beginning of things and then 
left orphaned. Every moment it comes from the 
heart of the master, it is breathed in his breath. 

And that Is the reason why It overspreads the sky 
like a thought taking shape in a poem, and never has 
to break into pieces with the burden of Its own ac- 
cumulating weight. Hence the surprise of endless va- 
riations, the advent of the unaccountable, the cease- 
less procession of individuals, each of whom is without 
a parallel in creation. As at the first so to the last, 
the beginning never ends — the world is ever old and 
ever new. 

It is for our self to know that it must be born 
anew every moment of its life. It must break 
through all illusions that encase it in their crust to 
make it appear old, burdening it with death. 

For life is Immortal youthfulness, and it hates age 
that tries to clog its movements — age that belongs 



90 SADHANA iv 

not to life In truth, but follows it as the shadow 
follows the lamp. 

Our life, like a river, strikes its banks not to find 
itself closed in by them, but to realise anew every 
moment that it has its unending opening towards the 
sea. It is as a poem that strikes its metre at every 
step not to be silenced by its rigid regulations, but 
to give expression every moment to the inner free- 
dom of its harmony. 

The boundary walls of our individuality thrust us 
back within our limits, on the one hand, and thus lead 
us, on the other, to the unlimited. Only when we try 
to make these limits infinite are we launched into 
an impossible contradiction and court miserable 
failure. 

This is the cause which leads to the great revolu- 
tions in human history. Whenever the part, spurn- 
ing the whole, tries to run a separate course of its 
own, the great pull of the all gives it a violent 
wrench, stops it suddenly, and brings it to the dust. 
Whenever the individual tries to dam the ever-flowing 
current of the world-force and imprison it within 
the area of his particular use, it brings on disaster. 
However powerful a king may be, he cannot raise 
his standard or rebellion against the infinite source of 
strength, which is unity, and yet remain powerful. 

It has been said, By unrighteousness men prosper, 
gain what they desire j and triumph over their enemies, 
but at the end they are cut off at the root and sufer 



IV THE PROBLEM OF SELF 91 

extinction} Our roots must go deep down Into the 
universal if we would attain the greatness of person- 
ality. 

It is the end of our self to seek that union. It 
must bend its head low in love and meekness and 
take its stand where great and small all meet. It 
has to gain by its loss and rise by its surrender. 
His games would be a horror to the child if he could 
not come back to his mother, and our pride of person- 
ality will be a curse to us if we cannot give it up in 
love. We must know that it is only the revelation 
of the Infinite which is endlessly new and eternally 
beautiful In us, and which gives the only meaning 
to our self. 

1 Adharmenaldhate tavat tato bhadrani pafyati tatah sapatnan 
jayati samulastu vina^yati. 



V 
REALISATION IN LOVE 



93 



REALISATION IN LOVE 

We come now to the eternal problem of the co- 
existence of the infinite and the finite, of the supreme 
being and our soul. There is the sublime paradox 
that lies at the root of existence. We never can 
go round it, because we never can stand outside 
the problem and weigh it against any other pos- 
sible alternative. But the problem exists in logic 
only; in reality it does not offer us any difiiculty 
at all. Logically speaking, the distance between two 
points, however near, may be said to be infinite, 
because it is infinitely divisible. But we do cross 
the infinite at every step, and meet the eternal in 
every second. Therefore some of our philosophers 
say there is no such thing as finitude; it is but a 
mdyd^ an illusion. The real is the infinite, and it is 
only mdyd, the unreality, which causes the appear- 
ance of the finite. But the word mdyd is a mere name, 
it is no explanation. It is merely saying that with 
truth there is this appearance which is the opposite 
of truth; but how they come to exist at one and 
the same time is incomprehensible. 

95 



96 SADHANA v 

We have what we call In Sanskrit dvandva, a 
series of opposites in creation; such as, the positive 
pole and the negative, the centripetal force and the 
centrifugal, attraction and repulsion. These are also 
mere names, they are no explanations. They are 
only different ways of asserting that the world in its 
essence is a reconciliation of pairs of opposing forces. 
These forces, like the left and the right hands of the 
creator, are acting in absolute harmony, yet acting 
from opposite directions. 

There is a bond of harmony between our two 
eyes, which makes them act in unison. Likewise 
there is an unbreakable continuity of relation In the 
physical world between heat and cold, light and 
darkness, motion and rest, as between the bass and 
treble notes of a piano. That Is why these opposites 
do not bring confusion in the universe, but harmony. 
If creation were but a chaos, we should have to 
imagine the two opposing principles as trying to get 
the better of each other. But the universe is not 
under martial law, arbitrary and provisional. Here 
we find no force which can run amok, or go on 
indefinitely in its wild road, like an exiled outlaw, 
breaking all harmony with its surroundings; each 
force, on the contrary, has to come back In a curved 
line to its equilibrium. Waves rise, each to its 
individual height in a seeming attitude of unrelenting 
competition, but only up to a certain point; and 
thus we know of the great repose of the sea to which 



V REALISATION IN LOVE 97 

they are all related, and to which they must all 
return in a rhythm which is marvellously beautiful. 

In fact, these undulations and vibrations, these 
risings and fallings, are not due to the erratic con- 
tortions of disparate bodies, they are a rhythmic 
dance. Rhythm never can be born of the haphazard 
struggle of combat. Its underlying principle must 
be unity, not opposition. 

This principle of unity is the mystery of all mys- 
teries. The existence of a duality at once raises 
a question in our minds, and we seek its solution 
In the One. When at last we find a relation be- 
tween these two, and thereby see them as one in 
essence, we feel that we have come to the truth. 
And then we give utterance to this most startling of 
all paradoxes, that the One appears as many, that 
the appearance is the opposite of truth and yet is 
inseparably related to it. 

Curiously enough, there are men who lose that 
feeling of mystery, which is at the root of all our 
delights, when they discover the uniformity of law 
among the diversity of nature. As if gravitation is 
not more of a mystery than the fall of an apple, as 
if the evolution from one scale of being to the other 
is not something which is even more shy of explana- 
tion than a succession of creations. The trouble is 
that we very often stop at such a law as if it were 
the final end of our search, and then we find that it 
does not even begin to emancipate our spirit. It 



98 SADHANA v 

only gives satisfaction to our intellect, and as it does 
not appeal to our whole being it only deadens in us 
the sense of the infinite. 

A great poem, when analysed, is a set of detached 
sounds. The reader who finds out the meaning, 
which is the inner medium that connects these outer 
sounds, discovers a perfect law all through, which 
is never violated in the least; the law of the evolu- 
tion of ideas, the law of the music and the form. 

But law in itself is a limit. It only shows that 
whatever is can never be otherwise. When a man 
Is exclusively occupied with the search for the links 
of causality, his mind succumbs to the tyranny of 
law in escaping from the tyranny of facts. In 
learning a language, when from mere words we 
reach the laws of words we have gained a great 
deal. But if we stop at that point, and only concern 
ourselves with the marvels of the formation of a 
language, seeking the hidden reason of all its ap- 
parent caprices, we do not reach the end — for gram- 
mar IS not literature, prosody is not a poem. 

When we come to literature we find that though 
it conforms to rules of grammar it is yet a thing of 
joy, it is freedom itself. The beauty of a poem is 
bound by strict laws, yet it transcends them. The 
laws are its wings, they do not keep it weighed 
down, they carry it to freedom. Its form is in law 
but its spirit Is in beauty. Law is the first step 
towards freedom, and beauty is the complete libera- 



V REALISATION IN LOVE 99 

tion which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty 
harmonises in itself the limit and the beyond, the 
law and the liberty. 

In the world-poem, the discovery of the law of 
its rhythms, the measurement of its expansion and 
contraction, movement and pause, the pursuit of its 
evolution of forms and characters, are true achieve- 
ments of the mind; but we cannot stop there. It 
is like a railway station; but the station platform 
is not our home. Only he has attained the final truth 
who knows that the whole world is a creation of joy. 

This leads me to think how mysterious the re- 
lation of the human heart with nature must be. 
In the outer world of activity nature has one aspect, 
but in our hearts, in the inner world, it presents an 
altogether different picture. 

Take an instance — the flower of a plant. How- 
ever fine and dainty it may look, it is pressed to do 
a great service, and its colours and forms are all 
suited to its work. It must bring forth the fruit, 
or the continuity of plant life will be broken and 
the earth will be turned into a desert ere long. The 
colour and the smell of the flower are all for some 
purpose therefore; no sooner is it fertilised by the 
bee, and the time of its fruition arrives, than it sheds 
its exquisite petals and a cruel economy compels it 
to give up its sweet perfume. It has no time to 
flaunt its finery, for it is busy beyond measure. 
Viewed from without, necessity seems to be the only 



100 SADHANA v 

factor in nature for which everything works and 
moves. There the bud develops into the flower, 
the flower into the fruit, the fruit into the seed, the 
seed into a new plant again, and so forth, the chain 
of activity running on unbroken. Should there crop 
up any disturbance or impediment, no excuse would 
be accepted, and the unfortunate thing thus choked 
in its movement would at once be labelled as re- 
jected, and be bound to die and disappear post- 
haste. In the great oflice of nature there are in- 
numerable departments with endless work going 
on, and the fine flower that you behold there, gaudily 
attired and scented like a dandy, is by no means 
what it appears to be, but rather, is like a labourer 
toiling in sun and shower, who has to submit a clear 
account of his work and has no breathing space to 
enjoy himself in playful frolic. 

But when this same flower enters the heart of 
men its aspect of busy practicality is gone, and it 
becomes the very emblem of leisure and repose. 
The same object that is the embodiment of endless 
activity without is the perfect expression of beauty 
and peace within. 

Science here warns us that we are mistaken, that 
the purpose of a flower is nothing but what is out- 
wardly manifested, and that the relation of beauty 
and sweetness which we think it bears to us is all 
our own making, gratuitous and imaginary. 

But our heart replies that we are not in the least 



V REALISATION IN LOVE loi 

mistaken. In the sphere of nature the flower carries 
with it a certificate which recommends it as hav- 
ing immense capacity for doing useful work, but 
it brings an altogether different letter of introduction 
when it knocks at the door of our hearts. Beauty 
becomes its only qualification. At one place it comes 
as a slave, and at another as a free thing. How, 
then, should we give credit to its first recommenda- 
tion and disbelieve the second one } That the flower 
has got its being in the unbroken chain of causation 
is true beyond doubt; but that is an outer truth. 
The inner truth is : Verily from the everlasting joy do 
all objects have their birth} 

A flower, therefore, has not its only function in 
nature, but has another great function to exercise in 
the mind of man. And what is that function.^ In 
nature its work is that of a servant who has to 
make his appearance at appointed times, but in the 
heart of man it comes like a messenger from the 
King. In the Rdmdyana, when Slid, forcibly sepa- 
rated from her husband, was bewailing her evil fate 
in Ravana's golden palace, she was met by a mes- 
senger who brought with him a ring of her beloved 
Rdmchandra himself. The very sight of it con- 
vinced Sltd of the truth of the tidings he bore. 
She was at once reassured that he came indeed from 
her beloved one, who had not forgotten her and 
was at hand to rescue her. 

^ Anandadhyeva khalvimani bhntani jay ante. 



102 SADHANA v 

Such a messenger is a flower from our great lover. 
Surrounded with the pomp and pageantry of worldli- 
ness, which may be Hkened to Ravana's golden city, 
we still live in exile, while the insolent spirit of 
worldly prosperity tempts us with allurements and 
claims us as its bride. In the meantime the flower 
comes across with a message from the other shore, 
and whispers in our ears, "I am come. He has 
sent me. I am a messenger of the beautiful, the 
one whose soul is the bliss of love. This island of 
isolation has been bridged over by him, and he has 
not forgotten thee, and will rescue thee even now. 
He will draw thee unto him and make thee his 
own. This illusion will not hold thee in thraldom 
for ever." 

If we happen to be awake then, we question him: 
"How are we to know that thou art come from 
him indeed?" The messenger says, "Look! I 
have this ring from him. How lovely are its hues 
and charms!" 

Ah, doubtless it is his — indeed, it is our wedding 
ring. Now all else passes into oblivion, only this 
sweet symbol of the touch of the eternal love fills 
us with a deep longing. We realise that the palace 
of gold where we are has nothing to do with us — 
our deliverance is outside it — and there our love 
has its fruition and our life its fulfilment. 

What to the bee in nature is merely colour and 
scent, and the marks or spots which show the right 



V REALISATION IN LOVE 103 

track to the honey, is to the human heart beauty and 
joy untrammelled by necessity. They bring a love- 
letter to the heart written in many-coloured inks. 

I was telling you, therefore, that however busy 
our active nature outwardly may be, she has a secret 
chamber within the heart where she comes and goes 
freely, without any design whatsoever. There the 
fire of her workshop is transformed into lamps of a 
festival, the noise of her factory is heard like music. 
The iron chain of cause and effect sounds heavily 
outside in nature, but in the human heart its un- 
alloyed delight seems to sound, as it were, like the 
golden strings of a harp. 

It Indeed seems to be wonderful that nature has 
these two aspects at one and the same time, and so 
antithetical — one being of thraldom and the other of 
freedom. In the same form, sound, colour, and taste 
two contrary notes are heard, one of necessity and 
the other of joy. Outwardly nature Is busy and 
restless. Inwardly she Is all silence and peace. She 
has toil on one side and leisure on the other. You 
see her bondage only when you see her from with- 
out, but within her heart Is a limitless beauty. 

Our seer says, "From joy are born all creatures, 
by joy they are sustained, towards joy they progress, 
and Into joy they enter." 

Not that he ignores law, or that his contempla- 
tion of this Infinite joy Is born of the Intoxication 
produced by an indulgence in abstract thought. 



I04 SADHANA v 

He fully recognises the inexorable laws of nature, 
and says, "Fire burns for fear of him (i. e, by his 
law); the sun shines by fear of him; and for fear 
of him the wind, the clouds, and death perform their 
offices." It is a reign of iron rule, ready to punish 
the least transgression. Yet the poet chants the 
glad song, "From joy are born all creatures, by joy 
they are sustained, towards joy they progress, and 
into joy they enter." 

The immortal being manifests himself in joy-form.^ 
His manifestation in creation is out of his fullness of 
joy. It is the nature of this abounding joy to realise 
itself in form which is law. The joy, which is with- 
out form, must create, must translate itself into 
forms. The joy of the singer is expressed in the 
form of a song, that of the poet in the form of a 
poem. Man in his role of a creator is ever creating 
forms, and they come out of his abounding joy. 

This joy, whose other name is love, must by its 
very nature have duality for its realisation. When 
the singer has his inspiration he makes himself 
into two; he has within him his other self as the 
hearer, and the outside audience is merely an ex- 
tension of this other self of his. The lover seeks 
his own other self in his beloved. It is the joy that 
creates this separation, in order to realise through 
obstacles the union. 

The amritam, the immortal bliss, has made him- 

^ Anandarupamamrltam yad vibhati. 



V REALISATION IN LOVE 105 

self Into two. Our soul Is the loved one, it Is his 
other self. We are separate; but If this separation 
were absolute, then there would have been absolute 
misery and unmitigated ev^U In this world. Then 
from untruth we never could reach truth, and from 
sin we never could hope to attain purity of heart; 
then all opposltes would ever remain opposltes, and 
we could never find a medium through which our 
differences could ever tend to meet. Then we could 
have no language, no understanding, no blending of 
hearts, no co-operation In life. But on the contrary, 
we find that the separateness of objects is in a fluid 
state. Their Individualities are ever changing, they 
are meeting and merging into each other, till science 
itself Is turning Into metaphysics, matter losing its 
boundaries, and the definition of life becoming more 
and more indefinite. 

Yes, our Individual soul has been separated from 
the supreme soul, but this has not been from aliena- 
tion but from the fullness of love. It is for that 
reason that untruths, sufferings, and evils are not at 
a standstill; the human soul can defy them, can 
overcome them, nay, can altogether transform them 
into new power and beauty. 

The singer Is translating his song Into singing, 
his joy into forms, and the hearer has to translate 
back the singing Into the original joy; then the 
communion between the singer and the hearer is 
complete. The Infinite joy is manifesting itself in 



io6 SADHANA v 

manifold forms, taking upon itself the bondage of 
law, and we fulfil our destiny when we go back from 
forms to joy, from law to the love, when we untie 
the knot of the finite and hark back to the infinite. 

The human soul is on its journey from the law 
to love, from discipline to liberation, from the 
moral plane to the spiritual. Buddha preached the 
discipline of self-restraint and moral life; it is a 
complete acceptance of law. But this bondage of 
law cannot be an end by itself; by mastering it 
thoroughly we acquire the means of getting beyond 
it. It is going back to Brahma, to the infinite love, 
which is manifesting itself through the finite forms 
of law. Buddha names it Brahma-vihdra, the joy of 
living in Brahma. He who wants to reach this 
stage, according to Buddha, "shall deceive none, 
entertain no hatred for anybody, and never wish to 
injure through anger. He shall have measureless 
love for all creatures, even as a mother has for her 
only child, whom she protects with her own life. 
Up above, below, and all around him he shall extend 
his love, which is without bounds and obstacles, and 
which is free from all cruelty and antagonism. 
While standing, sitting, walking, lying down, till he 
fall asleep, he shall keep his mind active in this 
exercise of universal goodwill." 

Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love 
is the perfection of consciousness. We do not love 
because we do not comprehend, or rather we do not 



V REALISATION IN LOVE 107 

comprehend because we do not love. For love is 
the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It 
is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the J07 
that is at the root of all creation. It is the white 
light of pure consciousness that emanates from 
Brahma. So, to be one with this sarvdnubhuh, 
this all-feeling being who is in the external sky, as 
well as in our inner soul, we must attain to that 
summit of consciousness, which is love: JVho could 
have breathed or moved if the sky were not filled with 
joy^ with love ? ^ It is through the heightening of 
our consciousness into love, and extending it all over 
the world, that we can attain Brahma-vihdra, com- 
munion with this infinite joy. 

Love spontaneously gives itself in endless gifts. 
But these gifts lose their fullest significance if through 
them we do not reach that love, which is the giver. 
To do that, we must have love in our own heart. 
He who has no love in him values the gifts of his 
lover only according to their usefulness. But utility 
is temporary and partial. It can never occupy our 
whole being; what is useful only touches us at the 
point where we have some want. When the want 
is satisfied, utility becomes a burden if it still persists. 
On the other hand, a mere token is of permanent 
worth to us when we have love in our heart. For it 
is not for any special use. It is an end in itself; it is 
for our whole being and therefore can never tire us. 

^ Ko hyevanyat kah pranyat yadesha aka9a anando na syat. 



io8 SADHANA v 

The question is, In what manner do we accept 
this world, which is a perfect gift of joy? Have 
we been able to receive it in our heart where we 
keep enshrined things that are of deathless value to 
us? We are frantically busy making use of the 
forces of the universe to gain more and more power; 
we feed and we clothe ourselves from its stores, we 
scramble for its riches, and it becomes for us a field 
of fierce competition. But were we born for this, to 
extend our proprietary rights over this world and 
make of it a marketable commodity? When our 
whole mind is bent only upon making use of this world 
it loses for us its true value. We make it cheap by 
our sordid desires; and thus to the end of our days 
we only try to feed upon it and miss its truth, just 
like the greedy child who tears leaves from a precious 
book and tries to swallow them. 

In the lands where cannibalism is prevalent man 
looks upon man as his food. In such a country 
civilisation can never thrive,' for there man loses 
his higher value and is made common indeed. But 
there are other kinds of cannibalism, perhaps not 
so gross, but not less heinous, for which one need 
not travel far. In countries higher in the scale of 
civilisation we find sometimes man looked upon as a 
mere body, and he is bought and sold in the market 
by the price of his flesh only. And sometimes he 
gets his sole value from being useful; he is made 
into a machine, and is traded upon by the man of 



V REALISATION IN LOVE 109 

money to acquire for him more money. Thus 
our lust, our greed, our love of comfort result in 
cheapening man to his lowest value. It is self- 
deception on a large scale. Our desires blind us to 
the truth that there is in man, and this is the greatest 
/Wrong done by ourselves to our own soul. It deadens 
our consciousness, and is but a gradual method of 
spiritual suicide. It produces ugly sores in the 
body of civilisation, gives rise to its hovels and 
brothels, its vindictive penal codes, its cruel prison 
systems, its organised method of exploiting foreign 
races to the extent of permanently injuring them 
by depriving them of the discipline of self-government 
and means of self-defence. 

Of course man is useful to man, because his body 
is a marvellous machine and his mind an organ of 
wonderful efficiency. But he is a spirit as well, and 
this spirit is truly known only by love. When we 
define a man by the market value of the service we 
can expect of him, we know him imperfectly. With 
this limited knowledge of him it becomes easy for 
us to be unjust to him and to entertain feelings of 
triumphant self-congratulation when, on account of 
some cruel advantage on our side, we can get out of 
him much more than we have paid for. But when 
we know him as a spirit we know him as our own. 
We at once feel that cruelty to him is cruelty to 
ourselves, to make him small is stealing from our 
own humanity, and in seeking to make use of him 



no SADHANA y 

solely for personal profit we merely gain in money 
or comfort what we pay for in truth. 

One day I was out in a boat on the Ganges. It 
was a beautiful evening in autumn. The sun had just 
set; the silence of the sky was full to the brim with 
ineffable peace and beauty. The vast expanse of 
water was without a ripple, mirroring all the chang- 
ing shades of the sunset glow. Miles and miles of a 
desolate sandbank lay like a huge amphibious reptile 
of some antediluvian age, with its scales glistening in 
shining colours. As our boat was silently gliding 
by the precipitous river-bank, riddled with the nest- 
holes of a colony of birds, suddenly a big fish leapt 
up to the surface of the water and then disappeared, 
displaying on its vanishing figure all the colours of 
the evening sky. It drew aside for a moment the 
many-coloured screen behind which there was a 
silent world full of the joy of life. It came up from 
the depths of its mysterious dwelling with a beauti- 
ful dancing motion and added its own music to the 
silent symphony of the dying day. I felt as if I 
had a friendly greeting from an alien world in its 
own language, and it touched my heart with a flash 
of gladness. Then suddenly the man at the helm 
exclaimed with a distinct note of regret, "Ah, what 
a big fish!" It at once brought before his vision 
the picture of the fish caught and made ready for 
his supper. He could only look at the fish through 
his desire, and thus missed the whole truth of its 



V REALISATION IN LOVE iii 

existence. But man Is not entirely an animal. He 
aspires to a spiritual vision, which is the vision of 
the whole truth. This gives him the highest delight, 
because It reveals to him the deepest harmony that 
exists between him and his surroundings. It is our 
desires that limit the scope of our self-realisation, 
hinder our extension of consciousness, and give rise 
to sin, which is the Innermost barrier that keeps us 
apart from our God, setting up disunion and the 
arrogance of exclusiveness. For sin is not one mere 
action, but It is an attitude of life which takes for 
granted that our goal is finite, that our self Is the ulti- 
mate truth, and that we are not all essentially one but 
exist each for his own separate Individual existence. 
So I repeat 'we never can have a true view of man 
unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be 
judged and prized, not by the amount of power It 
has developed, but by how much it has evolved and 
given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the 
love of humanity. The first question and the last 
which It has to answer is. Whether and how far It 
recognises man more as a spirit than as a machine.^ 
Whenever some ancient civilisation fell Into decay 
and died, It was owing to causes which produced 
callousness of heart and led to the cheapening of 
man's worth; when either the state or some powerful 
group of men began to look upon the people as a 
mere instrument of their power; when, by compelling 
weaker races to slavery and trying to keep them 



112 SADHANA V 

down by every means, man struck at the foundation 
of his greatness, his own love of freedom and fair- 
play. Civilisation can never sustain itself upon 
cannibalism of any form. For that by which alone 
man is true can only be nourished by love and 
justice. J^ 

As with man, so with this universe. When we 
look at the world through the veil of our desires 
we make it small and narrow, and fail to perceive 
its full truth. Of course it is obvious that the world 
serves us and fulfils our needs, but our relation to 
it does not end there. We are bound to it with a 
deeper and truer bond than that of necessity. Our 
soul is drawn to it; our love of life is really our 
wish to continue our relation with this great world. 
This relation is one of love. We are glad that we 
are in it; we are attached to it with numberless 
threads, which extend from this earth to the stars. 
Man foolishly tries to prove his superiority by im- 
agining his radical separateness from what he calls 
his physical world, which, in his blind fanaticism, he 
sometimes goes to the extent of ignoring altogether, 
holding it as his direst enemy. Yet the more his 
knowledge progresses, the more it becomes difficult 
for man to establish this separateness, and all the 
imaginary boundaries he had set up around himself 
vanish one after another. Every time we lose some 
of our badges of absolute distinction by which we 
conferred upon our humanity the right to hold itself 



V REALISATION IN LOVE 113 

apart from its surroundings, it gives us a shock of 
humiliation. But we have to submit to this. If we 
set up our pride on the path of our self-realisation 
to create divisions and disunion, then it must sooner 
or later come under the wheels of truth and be 
ground to dust. No, we are not burdened with 
some monstrous superiority, unmeaning in its singu- 
lar abruptness. It would be utterly degrading for us 
to live in a world immeasurably less than ourselves 
in the quality of soul, just as it would be repulsive 
and degrading to be surrounded and served by a 
host of slaves, day and night, from birth to the 
moment of death. On the contrary, this world is 
our compeer, nay, we are one with it. 

Through our progress in science the wholeness 
of the world and our oneness with it is becoming 
clearer to our mind. When this perception of the 
perfection of unity is not merely intellectual, when 
it opens out our whole being into a luminous con- 
sciousness of the all, then it becomes a radiant joy, 
an overspreading love. Our spirit finds its larger 
self in the whole world, and is filled with an absolute 
certainty that it is immortal. It dies a hundred 
times in its enclosures of self; for separateness is 
doomed to die, it cannot be made eternal. But it 
never can die where it is one with the all, for there 
is its truth, its joy. When a man feels the rhythmic 
throb of the soul-life of the whole world in his own 
soul, then is he free. Then he enters into the secret 



114 SADHANA v 

courting that goes on between this beautiful world- 
bride, veiled with the veil of the many-coloured 
finiteness, and the paramatmam, the bridegroom, in 
his spotless white. Then he knows that he is the 
partaker of this gorgeous love festival, and he is the 
honoured guest at the feast of immortality. Then he 
understands the meaning of the seer-poet who sings, 
"From love the world is born, by love it is sustained, 
towards love it moves, and into love it enters." 

In love all the contradictions of existence merge 
themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity 
and duality not at variance. Love must be one and 
two at the same time. 

Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart 
ever changes its place till it finds love, and then it 
has its rest. But this rest itself is an intense form 
of activity where utter quiescence and unceasing 
energy meet at the same point in love. 

In love, loss and gain are harmonised. In its 
balance-sheet, credit and debit accounts are in the 
same column, and gifts are added to gains. In this 
wonderful festival of creation, this great ceremony of 
self-sacrifice of God, the lover constantly gives him- 
self up to gain himself in love. Indeed, love is what 
brings together and inseparably connects both the 
act of abandoning and that of receiving. 

In love, at one of its poles you find the personal, 
and at the other the impersonal. At one you have 
the positive assertion — Here I am; at the other the 



V REALISATION IN LOVE 115 

equally strong denial — I am not. Without this ego 
what is love? And again, with only this ego how 
can love be possible? 

Bondage and liberation are not antagonistic in 
love. For love is most free and at the same time 
most bound. If God were absolutely free there 
would be no creation. The infinite being has assumed 
unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him' 
who is love the finite and the infinite are made one. 

Similarly, when we talk about the relative values 
of freedom and non-freedom, it becomes a mere play 
of words. It is not that we desire freedom alone, we 
want thraldom as well. It is the high function of 
love to welcome all limitations and to transcend them. 
For nothing is more independent than love, and 
where else, again, shall we find so much of depend- 
ence? In love, thraldom is as glorious as freedom. 

The Vaishnava religion has boldly declared that 
God has bound himself to man, and in that consists 
the greatest glory of human existence. In the spell 
of the wonderful rhythm of the finite he fetters him- 
self at every step, and thus gives his love out in 
music in his most perfect lyrics of beauty. Beauty 
is his wooing of our heart; it can have no other 
purpose. It tells us everywhere that the display of 
power is not the ultimate meaning of creation; 
wherever there is a bit of colour, a note of song, a 
grace of form, there comes the call for our love. 
Hunger compels us to obey its behests, but hunger 



ii6 SADHANA v 

is not the last word for a man. There have been 
men who have deliberately defied its commands to 
show that the human soul is not to be led by the 
pressure of wants and threat of pain. In fact, to live 
the life of man we have to resist its demands every 
day, the least of us as well as the greatest. But, 
on the other hand, there is a beauty in the world 
which never insults our freedom, never raises even 
its little finger to make us acknowledge its sover- 
eignty. We can absolutely ignore it and suffer no 
penalty in consequence. It is a call to us, but not 
a command. It seeks for love in us, and love can 
never be had by compulsion. Compulsion is not 
indeed the final appeal to man, but joy is. And joy 
is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of 
grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reck- 
less exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence 
of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our 
bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human 
figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise 
of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; 
in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can 
share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, 
unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts the most 
peremptory behests of necessity. It exists to show 
that the bonds of law can only be explained by love; 
they are like body and soul. Joy is the realisation of 
the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the 
world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover. 



VI 

REALISATION IN ACTION 



117 



REALISATION IN ACTION 

It Is only those who have known that joy expresses 
itself through law who have learnt to transcend the 
law. Not that the bonds of law have ceased to 
exist for them — but that the bonds have become to 
them as the form of freedom incarnate. The freed 
soul delights In accepting bonds, and does not seek 
to evade any of them, for In each does it feel the 
manifestation of an Infinite energy whose joy is in 
creation. 

As a matter of fact, where there are no bonds, 
where there Is the madness of licence, the soul ceases 
to be free. There Is Its hurt; there is its separation 
from the Infinite, Its agony of sin. Whenever at 
the call of temptation the soul falls away from the 
bondage of law, then, like a child deprived of the 
support of its mother's arms. It cries out, Smite me 
not!^ "Bind me," it prays, "oh, bind me in the 
bonds of thy law; bind me within and without; 
hold me tight; let me In the clasp of thy law be 
bound up together with thy joy; protect me by thy 
firm hold from the deadly laxity of sin." 

* Ma ma himsih. 
119 



I20 SADHANA vi 

As some, under the idea that law is the opposite 
of joy, mistake intoxication for joy, so there are 
many in our country who imagine action to be 
opposed to freedom. They think that activity being 
in the material plane is a restriction of the free spirit 
of the soul. But we must remember that as joy 
expresses itself in law, so the soul finds its freedom in 
action. It is because joy cannot find expression 
in itself alone that it desires the law which is outside. 
Likewise it is because the soul cannot find freedom 
within itself that it wants external action. The 
soul of man is ever freeing itself from its own folds 
by its activity; had it been otherwise it could not have 
done any voluntary work. 

The more man acts and makes actual what was 
latent in him, the nearer does he bring the distant 
Yet-to-be. In that actualisation man is ever making 
himself more and yet more distinct, and seeing him- 
self clearly under newer and newer aspects in the 
midst of his varied activities, in the state, in society. 
This vision makes for freedom. 

Freedom is not in darkness, nor in vagueness. 
There is no bondage so fearful as that of obscurity. 
It is to escape from this obscurity that the seed 
struggles to sprout, the bud to blossom. It is to 
rid itself of this envelope of vagueness that the ideas 
in our mind are constantly seeking opportunities to 
take on outward form. In the same way our soul, in 
order to release itself from the mist of indistinctness 



VI REALISATION IN ACTION 121 

and come out Into the open, is continually creating 
for itself fresh fields of action, and is busy contriving 
new forms of activity, even such as are not needful 
for the purposes of its earthly life. And why? 
Because it wants freedom. It wants to see itself, 
to realise itself. 

When man cuts down the pestilential jungle and 
makes unto himself a garden, the beauty that he thus 
sets free from within its enclosure of ugliness is the 
beauty of his own soul: without giving it this free- 
dom outside, he cannot make it free within. When 
he implants law and order In the midst of the way- 
wardness of society, the good which he sets free 
from the obstruction of the bad is the goodness of 
his own soul: without being thus made free outside 
it cannot find freedom within. Thus is man con- 
tinually engaged in setting free in action his powers, 
his beauty, his goodness, his very soul. And the 
more he succeeds In so doing, the greater does he see 
himself to be, the broader becomes the field of his 
knowledge of self. 

The Upanlshad says: In the midst of activity alone 
wilt thou desire to live a hundred years} It is the 
saying of those who had amply tasted of the joy of 
the soul. Those who have fully realised the soul have 
never talked In mournful accents of the sorrowfulness 
of life or of the bondage of action. They are not like 
the weakling flower whose stem-hold Is so light that 

^ Kurvanneveha karinam jijivishet fatam samah. 



122 SADHANA VI 

it drops away before attaining fruition. They hold 
on to life with all their might and say, "never will 
we let go till the fruit is ripe." They desire In their 
joy to express themselves strenuously in their life 
and In their work. Pain and sorrow dismay them 
not, they are not bowed down to the dust by the 
weight of their own heart. With the erect head 
of the victorious hero they march through life seeing 
themselves and showing themselves In Increasing 
resplendence of soul through both joys and sorrows. 
The joy of their life keeps step with the joy of that 
energy which Is playing at building and breaking 
throughout the universe. The joy of the sunlight, 
the joy of the free air, mingling with the joy of their 
lives, makes one sweet harmony reign within and 
without. It is they who say. In the midst of activity 
alone wilt thou desire to live a hundred years. 

This joy of life, this joy of work, in man is ab- 
solutely true. It is no use saying that it Is a delusion 
of ours; that unless we cast It away we cannot enter 
upon the path of self-realisation. It will never do the 
least good to attempt the realisation of the infinite 
apart from the world of action. 

It is not the truth that man is active on compulsion. 
If there Is compulsion on one side, on the other 
there is pleasure; on the one hand action is spurred 
on by want, on the other it hies to its natural ful- 
filment. That Is why, as man's civilisation advances, 
he Increases his obligations and the work that he 



VI REALISATION IN ACTION 123 

willingly creates for himself. One should have 
thought that nature had given him quite enough 
to do to keep him busy, in fact that it was work- 
ing him to death with the lash of hunger and thirst, — 
but no. Man does not think that sufficient; he cannot 
rest content with only doing the work that nature 
prescribes for him in common with the birds and 
beasts. He needs must surpass all, even in activity. 
No creature has to work so hard as man; he has 
been impelled to contrive for himself a vast field 
of action in society; and in this field he is for ever 
building up and pulling down, making and unmaking 
laws, piling up heaps of material, and incessantly 
thinking, seeking and suffering. In this field he has 
fought his mightiest battles, gained continual new 
life, made death glorious, and, far from evading 
troubles, has willingly and continually taken up the 
burden of fresh trouble. He has discovered the truth 
that he is not complete in the cage of his immediate 
surroundings, that he is greater than his present, 
and that while to stand still in one place may be 
comforting, the arrest of life destroys his true func- 
tion and the real purpose of his existence. 

This mahati vinashtih — this great destruction he 
cannot bear, and accordingly he toils and suffers 
in order that he may gain in stature by transcending 
his present, in order to become that which he yet 
is not. In this travail is man's glory, and it is 
because he knows it, that he has not sought to 



124 SADHANA vi 

circumscribe his field of action, but is constantly 
occupied In extending the bounds. Sometimes he 
wanders so far that his work tends to lose Its mean- 
ing, and his rushlngs to and fro create fearful eddies 
round different centres — eddies of self-interest, of 
pride of power. Still, so long as the strength of the 
current Is not lost, there Is no fear; the obstructions 
and the dead accumulations of his activity are 
dissipated and carried away; the Impetus corrects 
its own mistakes. Only when the soul sleeps In stag- 
nation do its enemies gain overmastering strength, 
and these obstructions become too clogging to be 
fought through. Hence have we been warned by 
our teachers that to work we must live, to live we 
must work; that life and activity are Inseparably 
connected. 

It Is the very characteristic of life that it is not 
complete within itself; it must come out. Its truth 
is In the commerce of the inside and the outside. 
In order to live, the body must maintain its various 
relations with the outside light and air — not only to 
gain life-force, but also to manifest It. Consider 
how fully employed the body is with Its own inside 
activities; its heart-beat must not stop for a second, 
its stomach, Its brain, must be ceaselessly working. 
Yet this is not enough; the body Is outwardly rest- 
less all the while. Its life leads it to an endless dance 
of work and play outside; it cannot be satisfied 
with the circulations of Its Internal economy, and only 



VI REALISATION IN ACTION 125 

finds the fulfilment of joy in its outward excur- 
sions. 

The same with t'he soul. It cannot live en its 
own internal feelings and imaginings. It is ever 
in need of external objects; not only to feed its 
inner consciousness but to apply itself in action, 
not only to receive but also to give. 

The real truth is, we cannot live if we divide 
him who is truth itself into two parts. We must 
abide in him within as well as without. In which- 
ever aspect we deny him we deceive ourselves and 
incur a loss. Brahma has not left me, let me not leave 
Brahma} If we say that we would realise him in 
introspection alone and leave him out of our ex- 
ternal activity, that we would enjoy him by the 
love in our heart, but not worship him by outward 
ministrations; or if we say the opposite, and over- 
weight ourselves on one side in the journey of our 
life's quest, we shall alike totter to our downfall. 

In the great western continent we see that the 
soul of man is mainly concerned with extending 
itself outwards; the open field of the exercise of 
power is its field. Its partiality is entirely for the 
world of extension, and it would leave aside — nay, 
hardly believe in — that field of inner consciousness 
which is the field of fulfilment. It has gone so far 
in this that the perfection of fulfilment seems to 
exist for it nowhere. Its science has always talked 

^ Maham brahma nirakuryyam ma ma brahma nirakarot. 



126 SADHANA vi 

of the never-ending evolution of the world. Its 
metaphysic has now begun to talk of the evolution 
of God himself. They will not admit that he is; 
they would have it that he also is becoming. 

They fail to realise that while the infinite is 
always greater than any assignable limit, it is also 
complete; that on the one hand Brahma is evolving, 
on the other he is perfection; that in the one as- 
pect he is essence, in the other manifestation — 
both together at the same time, as is the song and 
the act of singing. This is like ignoring the con- 
sciousness of the singer and saying that only the 
singing is in progress, that there is no song. Doubt- 
less we are directly aware only of the singing, and 
never at any one time of the song as a whole; but 
do we not all the time know that the complete 
song is in the soul of the singer? 

It is because of this insistence on the doing and 
the becoming that we perceive in the west the 
intoxication of power. These men seem to have 
determined to despoil and grasp everything by 
force. They would always obstinately be doing 
and never be done — they would not allow to death 
its natural place in the scheme of things — they 
know not the beauty of completion. 

In our country the danger comes from the op- 
posite side. Our partiality is for the internal world. 
We would cast aside with contumely the field of 
power and of extension. We would realise Brahma 



VI REALISATION IN ACTION 127 

in meditation only in his aspect of completeness, 
we have determined not to see him in the com- 
merce of the universe in his aspect of evolution. 
That is why in our seekers we so often find the 
intoxication of the spirit and its consequent degra- 
dation. Their faith would acknowledge no bondage 
of law, their imagination soars unrestricted, their 
conduct disdains to offer any explanation to reason. 
Their intellect, in its vain attempts to see Brahma 
inseparable from his creation, works itself stone-dry, 
and their heart, seeking to confine him within its 
own outpourings, swoons in a drunken ecstasy of 
emotion. They have not even kept within reach 
any standard whereby they can measure the loss of 
strength and character which manhood sustains by 
thus ignoring the bonds of law and the claims of 
action in the external universe. 

But true spirituality, as taught in our sacred lore, 
is calmly balanced in strength, in the correlation of 
the within and the without. The truth has its 
law, it has its joy. On one side of it is being chanted 
the Bhayddasydgnistapati,^ on the other the Anan- 
dddhyeva khalvimdni hhutdni jay ante. '^ Freedom is 
impossible of attainment without submission to law, 
for Brahma is in one aspect bound by his truth, in 
the other free in his joy. 

As for ourselves, it is oniy when we wholly sub- 

^ "For fear of him the fire doth burn," etc. 
2 "From Joy are born all created things," etc. 



128 SADHANA vi 

mit to the bonds of truth that we fully gain the 
joy of freedom. And how? As does the string 
that is bound to the harp. When the harp is truly 
strung, when there is not the slightest laxity in the 
strength of the bond, then only does music result; 
and the string transcending itself in its melody finds 
at every chord its true freedom. It is because it is 
bound by such hard and fast rules on the one side 
that it can find this range of freedom in music on 
the other. While the string was not true, it was 
indeed merely bound; but a loosening of its bondage 
would not have been the way to freedom, which it 
can only fully achieve by being bound tighter and 
tighter till it has attained the true pitch. 

The bass and treble strings of our duty are only 
bonds so long as we cannot maintain them stead- 
fastly attuned according to the law of truth; and 
we cannot call by the name of freedom the loosen- 
ing of them into the nothingness of inaction. That 
is why I would say that the true striving in the 
quest of truth, of dharma, consists not in the neg- 
lect of action but in the effort to attune it closer 
and closer to the eternal harmony. The text of 
this striving should be. Whatever works thou doest, 
consecrate them to Brahma} That is to say, the soul 
is to dedicate itself to Brahma through all its activi- 
ties. This dedication is the song of the soul, in this is 
its freedom. Joy reigns when all work becomes the 

^ Yadyat karma prakurvita tadbrahmani samarpayet. 



VI REALISATION IN ACTION 129 

path to the union with Brahma; when the soul 
ceases to return constantly to its own desires; when 
in it our self-offering grows more and more intense. 
Then there is completion, then there is freedom, 
then, in this world, comes the kingdom of God. 

Who is there that, sitting in his corner, would 
deride this grand self-expression of humanity in 
action, this incessant self-consecration? Who is 
there that thinks the union of God and man is to 
be found in some secluded enjoyment of his own 
imaginings, away from the sky-towering temple of 
the greatness of humanity, which the whole of 
mankind, in sunshine and storm, is toiling to erect 
through the ages? Who is there that thinks this 
secluded communion is the highest form of religion? 

O thou distraught wanderer, thou Sannyasin, 
drunk in the wine of self-intoxication, dost thou not 
already hear the progress of the human soul along the 
highway traversing the wide fields of humanity — the 
thunder of its progress in the car of its achieve- 
ments, which is destined to overpass the bounds 
that prevent its expansion into the universe? The 
very mountains are cleft asunder and give way before 
the march of its banners waving triumphantly in the, 
heavens; as the mist before the rising sun, the 
tangled obscurities of material things vanish at its ir- 
resistible approach. Pain, disease, and disorder are 
at every step receding before its onset; the obstruc- 
tions of ignorance are being thrust aside; the dark- 



I30 SADHANA vi 

ness of blindness is being pierced through; and 
behold, the promised land of wealth and health, of 
poetry and art, of knowledge and righteousness Is 
gradually being revealed to view. Do you in your 
lethargy desire to say that this car of humanity, 
which is shaking the very earth with the triumph 
of its progress along the mighty vistas of history, 
has no charioteer leading it on to its fulfilment? 
Who Is there who refuses to respond to his call to 
join In this triumphal progress? Who so foolish as 
to run away from the gladsome throng and seek him 
In the llstlessness of inaction? Who so steeped In 
untruth as to dare to call all this untrue — this great 
world of men, this civilisation of expanding human- 
ity, this eternal eifort of man, through depths of 
sorrow, through heights of gladness, through innu- 
merable Impediments within and without, to win vic- 
tory for his powers? He who can think of this im- 
mensity of achievement as an Immense fraud, can he 
truly believe in God who is the truth ? He who thinks 
to reach God by running away from the world, 
when and where does he expect to meet him? How 
far can he fly — can he fly and fly, till he flies Into 
nothingness Itself? No, the coward who would 
fly can nowhere find him. We must be brave 
enough to be able to say: We are reaching him here 
in this very spot, now at this very moment. We 
must be able to assure ourselves that as in our actions 
we are realising ourselves, so in ourselves we are 



VI REALISATION IN ACTION 131 

realising him who is the self of self. We must 
earn the right to say so unhesitatingly by clearing 
away with our own effort all obstruction, all dis- 
order, all discords from our path of activity; we 
must be able to say, "In my work is my joy, and in 
that joy does the joy of my joy abide."/ 

Whom does the Upanishad call The chief among 
the knozvers of Brahma ? ^ He is defined as He whose 
joy is in Brahma, whose play is in Brahma, the active 
one, ^ Joy without the play of joy is no joy at all — 
play without activity is no play. Activity is the 
play of joy. He whose joy is in Brahma, how can 
he live in inaction? For must he not by his activity 
provide that in which the joy of Brahma is to take 
form and manifest itself? That is why he who 
knows Brahma, who has his joy in Brahma, must also 
have all his activity in Brahma — his eating and 
drinking, his earning of livelihood and his benefi- 
cence. Just as the joy of the poet in his poem, of 
the artist in his art, of the brave man in the output 
of his courage, of the wise man in his discernment 
of truths, ever seeks expression in their several 
activities, so the joy of the knower of Brahma, in 
the whole of his everyday work, little and big, in 
truth, in beauty, in orderliness and in beneficence, 
seeks to give expression to the infinite. 

Brahma himself gives expression to his joy in 
just the same way. By his many-sided activity, which 

^ Brahmavidaravaristhah. ^ Atmakrirha atmaratih krlyavan. 



132 SADHANA 



VI 



radiates in all directions, does he fulfil the inherent want 
of his different creatures} That inherent want is he 
himself, and so he is in so many ways, in so many 
forms, giving himself. He works, for without work- 
ing how could he give himself. His joy is ever 
dedicating itself in the dedication which is his 
creation. 

In this very thing does our own true meaning 
lie, in this is our likeness to our father. We must 
also give up ourselves in many-sided variously aimed 
activity. In the Vedas he is called the giver of him- 
self, the giver of strength} He is not content with 
giving us himself, but he gives us strength that we 
may likewise give ourselves. That is why the seer 
of the Upanishad prays to him who is thus fulfill- 
ing our wants, May he grant us the beneficent mind,^ 
may he fulfil that uttermost want of ours by grant- 
ing us the beneficent mind. That is to say, it is not 
enough he should alone work to remove our want, 
but he should give us the desire and the strength 
to work with him in his activity and in the exercise 
of the goodness. Then, indeed, will our union with 
him alone be accomplished. The beneficent mind 
is that which shows us the want (szvdrtha) of another 
self to be the inherent want (nihitdrtha) of our own 
self; that which shows that our joy consists in the 
varied aiming of our many-sided powers in the work 

* Bahudha fakti yogat varnananekan nihitartho dadhati. 
2 Atmada balada. ^ Sa no buddhya 9ubhaya samyunaktu. 



VI REALISATION IN ACTION 133 

of humanity. When we work under the guidance 
of this beneficent mind, then our activity is regulated, 
but does not become mechanical; it is action not 
goaded on by want, but stimulated by the satisfac- 
tion of the soul. Such activity ceases to be a blind 
imitation of that of the multitude, a cowardly follow- 
ing of the dictates of fashion. Therein we begin to 
see that He is in the beginning and in the end of 
the universe,'^ and likewise see that of our own work 
is he the fount and the inspiration, and at the end 
thereof is he, and therefore that all our activity is 
pervaded by peace and good and joy. 

The Upanishad says: Knowledge, power , and action 
are of his nature,"^ It is because this naturalness has 
not yet been born in us that we tend to divide joy 
from work. Our day of work is not our day of joy 
— for that we require a holiday; for, miserable that 
we are, we cannot find our holiday in our work. 
The river finds its holiday in its onward flow, the 
fire in its outburst of flame, the scent of the flower 
in its permeation of the atmosphere; but in our every- 
day work there is no such holiday for us. It is be- 
cause we do not let ourselves go, because we do 
not give ourselves joyously and entirely up to it, 
that our work overpowers us. 

O giver of thyself! at the vision of thee as joy 
let our souls flame up to thee as the fire, flow on to 
thee as the river, permeate thy being as the fragrance 

^ Vichaiti chante vifvamadau. ^ SvabhavikI jnana bala kriya cha. i 



134 SADHANA vi 

of the flower. Give us strength to love, to love 
fully, our life in its joys and sorrows, in its gains and 
losses, in its rise and fall. Let us have strength 
enough fully to see and hear thy universe, and to 
work with full vigour therein. Let us fully live 
the life thou hast given us, let us bravely take and 
bravely give. This is our prayer to thee. Let us 
once for all dislodge from our minds the feeble fancy 
that would make out thy joy to be a thing apart from 
action, thin, formless, and unsustained. Wherever 
the peasant tills the hard earth, there does thy joy 
gush out in the green of the corn, wherever man 
displaces the entangled forest, smooths the stony 
ground, and clears for himself a homestead, there 
does thy joy enfold it in orderliness and peace. 

O worker of the universe! We would pray to 
thee to let the irresistible current of thy universal 
energy come like the impetuous south wind of 
spring, let it come rushing over the vast field of the 
life of man, let it bring the scent of many flowers, 
the murmurings of many woodlands, let it make 
sweet and vocal the lifelessness of our dried-up soul- 
life. Let our newly awakened powers cry out for 
unlimited fulfilment in leaf and flower and fruit. 



VII 
THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY 



135 



THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY 

Things in which we do not take joy are either a 
burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; 
or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and 
partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when 
their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vaga- 
bonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our 
recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only 
completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us. 

The greater part of this world is to us as if it 
were nothing. But we cannot allow it to remain so, 
for thus it belittles our own self. The entire world 
is given to us, and all our powers have their final 
meaning in the faith that by their help we are to 
take possession of our patrimony. 

But what is the function of our sense of beauty in 
this process of the extension of our consciousness.'* 
Is it there to separate truth into strong lights and 
shadows, and bring it before us in its uncompro- 
mising distinction of beauty and ugliness .f* If that 
were so, then we would have had to admit that this 
sense of beauty creates a dissension in our universe 

137 



138 SADHANA vii 

and sets up a wall of hindrance across the highway of 
communication that leads from everything to all 
things. 

But that cannot be true. As long as our realisa- 
tion is incomplete a division necessarily remains 
between things known and unknown, pleasant and 
unpleasant. But in spite of the dictum of some 
philosophers man does not accept any arbitrary and 
absolute limit to his knowable world. Every day 
his science is penetrating into the region formerly 
marked in his map as unexplored or inexplorable. 
Our sense of beauty is similarly engaged in ever 
pushing on its conquests. Truth is everywhere, 
therefore everything is the object of our knowledge. 
Beauty is omnipresent, therefore everything is ca- 
pable of giving us joy. 

In the early days of his history man took every- 
thing as a phenomenon of life. His science of life 
began by creating a sharp distinction between life 
and non-life. But as it is proceeding farther and 
farther the line of demarcation between the animate 
and inanimate is growing more and more dim. In 
the beginning of our apprehension these sharp lines 
of contrast are helpful to us, but as our comprehen- 
sion becomes clearer they gradually fade away. 

The Upanishads have said that all things are 
created and sustained by an infinite joy. To realise 
this principle of creation we have to start with a 
division — the division into the beautiful and the non- 



VII THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY 139 

beautiful. Then the apprehension of beauty has to 
come to us with a vigorous blow to awaken our 
consciousness from its primitive lethargy, and it 
attains its object by the urgency of the contrast. 
Therefore our first acquaintance with beauty is in 
her dress of motley colours, that aifects us with its 
stripes and feathers, nay, with its disfigurements. 
But as our acquaintance ripens, the apparent dis- 
cords are resolved into modulations of rhythm. At 
first we detach beauty from its surroundings, we hold 
it apart from the rest, but at the end we realise its 
harmony with all. Then the music of beauty has no 
more need of exciting us with loud noise; it renounces 
violence, and appeals to our heart with the truth 
that it is meekness inherits the earth. 

In some stage of our growth, in some period of 
our history, we try to set up a special cult of beauty, 
and pare it down to a narrow circuit, so as to make 
it a matter of pride for a chosen few. Then it 
breeds in its votaries affectations and exaggerations, 
as it did with the Brahmins in the time of the decad- 
ence of Indian civilisation, when the perception of 
the higher truth fell away and superstitions grew up 
unchecked. 

In the history of aesthetics there also comes an 
age of emancipation when the recognition of beauty 
in things great and small become easy, and when we 
see it more in the unassuming harmony of common 
objects than in things startling in their singularity. 



I40 SADHANA vii 

So much so, that we have to go through the stages 
of reaction when In the representation of beauty we 
try to avoid everything that is obviously pleasing 
and that has been crowned by the sanction of con- 
vention. We are then tempted In defiance to ex- 
aggerate the commonness of commonplace things, 
thereby making them aggressively uncommon. To 
restore harmony we create the discords which are a 
feature of all reactions. We already see in the 
present age the sign of this aesthetic reaction, which 
proves that man has at last come to know that it 
is only the narrowness of perception which sharply 
divides the field of his aesthetic consciousness into 
ugliness and beauty. When he has the power to see 
things detached from self-interest and from the 
insistent claims of the lust of the senses, then alone 
can he have the true vision of the beauty that is 
everywhere. Then only can he see that what Is 
unpleasant to us Is not necessarily unbeautlful, but 
has its beauty in truth. 

When we say that beauty is everywhere we do 
not mean that the word ugliness should be abolished 
from our language, just as It would be absurd to say 
that there Is no such thing as untruth. Untruth 
there certainly Is, not in the system of the universe, 
but in our power of comprehension, as Its negative 
element. In the same manner there Is ugliness In 
the distorted expression of beauty In our life and In 
our art which comes from our imperfect realisation 



VII THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY 141 

of Truth. To a certain extent we can set our life 
against the law of truth which is In us and which is 
in all, and likewise we can give rise to ugliness by 
going counter to the eternal law of harmony which is 
everywhere. 

Through our sense of truth we realise law In 
creation, and through our sense of beauty we realise 
harmony in the universe. When we recognise the 
law in nature we extend our mastery over physical 
forces and become powerful; when we recognise the 
law in our moral nature we attain mastery over self 
and become free. In like manner the more we 
comprehend the harmony in the physical world the 
more our life shares the gladness of creation, and our 
expression of beauty in art becomes more truly 
catholic. As we become conscious of the harmony 
in our soul, our apprehension of the blissfulness of 
the spirit of the world becomes universal, and the 
expression of beauty in our life moves in goodness 
and love towards the Infinite. This is the ultimate 
object of our existence, that we must ever know 
that "beauty is truth, truth beauty"; we must 
realise the whole world in love, for love gives it 
birth, sustains it, and takes it back to its bosom. 
We must have that perfect emancipation of heart 
which gives us the power to stand at the innermost 
centre of things and have the taste of that fullness of 
disinterested joy which belongs to Brahma. 

Music is the purest form of art, and therefore 



142 SADHANA vii 

the most direct expression of beauty, with a form 
and spirit which is one and simple, and least en- 
cumbered with anything extraneous. We seem to 
feel that the manifestation of the infinite in the 
finite forms of creation is music itself, silent and 
visible. The evening sky, tirelessly repeating the 
starry constellations, seems like a child struck with 
wonder at the mystery of its own first utterance, 
lisping the same word over and over again, and 
listening to it in unceasing joy. When in the rainy 
night of July the darkness is thick upon the meadows 
and the pattering rain draws veil upon veil over the 
stillness of the slumbering earth, this monotony of 
the rain patter seems to be the darkness of sound 
itself. The gloom of the dim and dense line of 
trees, the thorny bushes scattered in the bare heath 
like floating heads of swimmers with bedraggled 
hair, the smell of the damp grass and the wet earth, 
the spire of the temple rising above the undefined 
mass of blackness grouped around the village huts — 
everything seems like notes rising from the heart of 
the night, mingling and losing themselves in the one 
sound of ceaseless rain filling the sky. 

Therefore the true poets, they who are seers, seek 
to express the universe in terms of music. 

They rarely use symbols of painting to express 
the unfolding of forms, the mingling of endless lines 
and colours that goes on every moment on the canvas 
of the blue sky. 



VII THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY 143 

They have their reason. For the man who paints 
must have canvas, brush, and colour-box. The first 
touch of his brush is very far from the complete 
idea. And then when the work is finished the 
artist is gone, the widowed picture stands alone, the 
incessant touches of love of the creative hand are 
withdrawn. 

But the singer has everything within him. The 
notes come out from his very life. They are not mate- 
rials gathered from outside. His idea and his expres- 
sion are brother and sister; very often they are born 
as twins. In music the heart reveals itself immedi- 
ately; it suffers not from any barrier of alien material. 

Therefore though music has to wait for its com- 
pleteness like any other art, yet at every step it gives 
out the beauty of the whole. As the material of 
expression even words are barriers, for their meaning 
has to be construed by thought. But music never 
has to depend upon any obvious meaning; it ex- 
presses what no words can ever express. 

What is more, music and the musician are in- 
separable. When the singer departs, his singing 
dies with him; it is in eternal union with the life 
and joy of the master. 

This world-song is never for a moment separated 
from its singer. It is not fashioned from any outward 
material. It is his joy itself taking never-ending 
form. It is the great heart sending the tremor 
of its thrill over the sky. 



144 SADHANA vii 

There Is a perfection In each Individual strain of 
this music, which Is the revelation of completion In 
the Incomplete. No one of Its notes Is final, yet 
each reflects the Infinite. 

What does It matter If we fall to derive the ex- 
act meaning of this great harmony? Is It not like 
the hand meeting the string and drawing out at 
once all Its tones at the touch? It is the language 
of beauty, the caress, that comes from the heart of 
the world and straightway reaches our heart. 

Last night. In the silence which pervaded the 
darkness, I stood alone and heard the voice of the 
singer of eternal melodies. When I went to sleep I 
closed my eyes with this last thought In my mind, 
that even when I remain unconscious in slumber the 
dance of life will still go on In the hushed arena of 
my sleeping body, keeping step with the stars. The 
heart will throb, the blood will leap In the veins, 
and the millions of living atoms of my body will 
vibrate In tune with the note of the harp-string that 
thrills at the touch of the master. 



VIII 



THE REALISATION OF THE INFINITE 



145 



THE REALISATION OF THE INFINITE 

The Upanishads say: "Man becomes true If in 
this life he can apprehend God; if not, it is the 
greatest calamity for him." 

But what is the nature of this attainment of God? 
It is quite evident that the infinite is not like one 
object among many, to be definitely classified and 
kept among our possessions, to be used as an ally 
specially favouring us in our politics, warfare, 
money-making, or in social competitions. We can- 
not put our God in the same list with our summer- 
houses, motor-cars, or our credit at the bank, as so 
many people seem to want to do. 

We must try to understand the true character of 
the desire that a man has when his soul longs for 
his God. Does it consist of his wish to make an 
addition, however valuable, to his belongings? 
Emphatically nol It is an endlessly wearisome 
task, this continual adding to our stores. In fact, 
when the soul seeks God she seeks her final escape 
from this incessant gathering and heaping and never 
coming to an end. It is not an additional object 

147 



148 SADHANA VIII 

that she seeks, but it is the nityo 'nitydndm, the 
permanent in all that is impermanent, the rasdndm 
rasatamahy the highest abiding joy unifying all 
enjoyments. Therefore when the Upanishads teach 
us to realise everything in Brahma, it is not to 
seek something extra, not to manufacture some- 
thing new. 

Know everything that there is in the universe as 
enveloped by God} Enjoy whatever is given by him 
and harbour not in your mind the greed for wealth 
which is not your own.^ 

When you know that whatever there is is filled 
by him and whatever you have is his gift, then you 
realise the infinite in the finite, and the giver in the 
gifts. Then you know that all the facts of the 
reality have their only meaning in the manifestation 
of the one truth, and all your possessions have their 
only significance for you, not in themselves but in 
the relation they establish with the infinite. 

So it cannot be said that we can find Brahma as 
we find other objects; there is no question of search- 
ing for him in one thing in preference to another, 
in one place instead of somewhere else. We do 
not have to run to the grocer's shop for our morn- 
ing light; we open our eyes and there it is; so we 
need only give ourselves up to find that Brahma is 
everywhere. 

* Ighavasyamdiam sarvam yat kincha jagatyanjagat. 
'Tena tyaktena bhunjitha ma gridhah kasyasviddhanam. 



VIII REALISATION OF THE INFINITE 149 

This IS the reason why Buddha admonished us to 
free ourselves from the confinement of the Hfe of 
the self. If there were nothing else to take its place 
more positively perfect and satisfying, then such 
admonition would be absolutely unmeaning. No 
man can seriously consider the advice, much less 
have any enthusiasm for it, of surrendering every- 
thing one has for gaining nothing whatever. 

So our daily worship of God is not really the 
process of gradual acquisition of him, but the daily 
process of surrendering ourselves, removing all 
obstacles to union and extending our consciousness 
of him in devotion and service, in goodness and 
in love. 

The Upanishads say: Be lost altogether in Brahma 
like an arrow that has completely penetrated its target. 
Thus to be conscious of being absolutely enveloped 
by Brahma is not an act of mere concentration of 
mind. It must be the aim of the whole of our life. 
In all our thoughts and deeds we must be conscious 
of the infinite. Let the realisation of this truth 
become easier every day of our life, that none could 
live or move if the energy of the all-pervading joy did 
not fill the sky} In all our actions let us feel that 
impetus of the infinite energy and be glad. 

It may be said that the infinite is beyond our at- 
tainment, so it is for us as if it were naught. Yes, if 
the word attainment implies any idea of possession, 

^ Ko hyevanyat kah pranyat yadesha aka^ha anando na syat. 



150 SADHANA viii 

then It must be admitted that the infinite Is unattain- 
able. But we must keep in mind that the highest 
enjoyment of man is not In the having but In a 
getting, which Is at the same time not getting. Our 
physical pleasures leave no margin for the unrealised. 
They, like the dead satellite of the earth, have but 
little atmosphere around them. When we take 
food and satisfy our hunger It Is a complete act of 
possession. So long as the hunger Is not satisfied It 
is a pleasure to eat. For then our enjoyment of 
eating touches at every point the infinite. But, 
when it attains completion, or in other words, when 
our desire for eating reaches the end of the stage of 
Its non-realisation. It reaches the end of Its pleasure. 
In all our Intellectual pleasures the margin is broader, 
the limit Is far off. In all our deeper love getting and 
non-getting run ever parallel. In one of our Valsh- 
nava lyrics the lover says to his beloved: "I feel 
as if I have gazed upon the beauty of thy face from 
my birth, yet my eyes are hungry still: as if I have 
kept thee pressed to my heart for millions of years, 
yet my heart Is not satisfied." 

This makes It clear that it Is really the infinite 
whom we seek In our pleasures. Our desire for 
being wealthy Is not a desire for a particular sum of 
money but It is indefinite, and the most fleeting of 
our enjoyments are but the momentary touches of 
the eternal. The tragedy of human life consists in 
our vain attempts to stretch the limits of things 



VIII REALISATION OF THE INFINITE 151 

which can never become unlimited, — to reach the 
infinite by absurdly adding to the rungs of the ladder 
of the finite. 

It is evident from this that the real desire of our 
soul is to get beyond all our possessions. Surrounded 
by things she can touch and feel, she cries, "I am 
weary of getting; ah, where is he who is never to 
begot.?" 

We see everywhere in the history of man that the 
spirit of renunciation is the deepest reality of the 
human soul. When the soul says of anything, "I 
do not want it, for I am above it," she gives utter- 
ance to the highest truth that is in her. When a 
girl's life outgrows her doll, when she realises that 
in every respect she is more than her doll is, then 
she throws it away. By the very act of possession 
we know that we are greater than the things we 
possess. It is a perfect misery to be kept bound up 
with things lesser than ourselves. This it is that 
Maitreyi felt when her husband gave her his prop- 
erty on the eve of leaving home. She asked him, 
"Would these material things help one to attain the 
highest?" — or, in other words, "Are they more than 
my soul to me?" When her husband answered, 
"They will make you rich in worldly possessions," 
she said at once, "Then what am I to do with these?" 
It is only when a man truly realises what his pos- 
sessions are that he has no more illusions about them; 
then he knows his soul is far above these things and 



152 SADHANA viii 

he becomes free from their bondage. Thus man 
truly realises his soul by outgrowing his possessions, 
and man's progress in the path of eternal life is 
through a series of renunciations. 

That we cannot absolutely possess the infinite 
being is not a mere intellectual proposition. It has 
to be experienced, and this experience is bliss. The 
bird, while taking its flight in the sky, experiences 
at every beat of its wings that the sky is boundless, 
that its wings can never carry it beyond. Therein 
lies its joy. In the cage the sky is limited; it may 
be quite enough for all the purposes of the bird's 
life, only it is not more than is necessary. The bird 
cannot rejoice within the limits of the necessary. It 
must feel that what it has is immeasurably more than 
it ever can want or comprehend, and then only can 
it be glad. 

Thus our soul must soar in the infinite, and she 
must feel every moment that in the sense of not 
being able to come to the end of her attainment is 
her supreme joy, her final freedom. 

Man's abiding happiness is not in getting anything 
but in giving himself up to what is greater than 
himself, to ideas which are larger than his individual 
life, the idea of his country, of humanity, of God. 
They make it easier for him to part with all that he 
has, not excepting his life. His existence is miser- 
able and sordid till he finds some great idea which 
can truly claim his all, which can release him from 



VIII REALISATION OF THE INFINITE 153 

all attachment to his belongings. Buddha and Jesus, 
and all our great prophets, represent such great ideas. 
They hold before us opportunities for surrender- 
ing our all. When they bring forth their divine 
alms-bowl we feel we cannot help giving, and we 
find that in giving is our truest joy and liberation, 
for it is uniting ourselves to that extent with the 
infinite. 

Man is not complete; he is yet to be. In what 
he is he is small, and if we could conceive him 
stopping there for eternity we should have an idea 
of the most awful hell that man can imagine. In 
his to he he is infinite, there is his heaven, his deliver- 
ance. His is is occupied every moment with what 
it can get and have done with; his to he is hunger- 
ing for something which is more than can be got, 
which he never can lose because he never has pos- 
sessed. 

The finite pole of our existence has its place in 
the world of necessity. There man goes about 
searching for food to live, clothing to get warmth. 
In this region — the region of nature — It is his function 
to get things. The natural man is occupied with 
enlarging his possessions. 

But this act of getting Is partial. It is limited 
to man's necessities. We can have a thing only to 
the extent of our requirements, just as a vessel can 
contain water only to the extent of its emptiness. 
Our relation to food is only in feeding, our relation 



154 SADHANA viii 

to a house is only in habitation. We call it a benefit 
when a thing is fitted only to some particular want 
of ours. Thus to get is always to get partially, 
and it never can be otherwise. So this craving for 
acquisition belongs to our finite self. 

But that side of our existence whose direction is 
towards the infinite seeks not wealth, but freedom 
and joy. There the reign of necessity ceases, and 
there our function is not to get but to be. To be 
what-f* To be one with Brahma. For the region 
of the infinite is the region of unity. Therefore the 
Upanishads say: // man apprehends God he he- 
comes true. Here it is becoming, it is not having 
more. Words do not gather bulk when you know 
their meaning; they become true by being one with 
the idea. 

Though the West has accepted as its teacher him 
who boldly proclaimed his oneness with his Father, 
and who exhorted his followers to be perfect as God, 
it has never been reconciled to this idea of our unity 
with the infinite being. It condemns, as a piece of 
blasphemy, any implication of man's becoming God. 
This is certainly not the idea that Christ preached, 
nor perhaps the idea of the Christian mystics, but 
this seems to be the idea that has become popular in 
the Christian west. 

But the highest wisdom in the East holds that it 
is not the function of our soul to gain God, to utilise 
him for any special material purpose. All that we 



VIII REALISATION OF THE INFINITE 155 

can ever aspire to is to become more and more one 
with God. In the region of nature, which is the 
region of diversity, we grow by acquisition; in the 
spiritual world, which is the region of unity, we 
grow by losing ourselves, by uniting. Gaining a 
thing, as we have said, is by its nature partial, it is 
limited only to a particular want; but being is com- 
plete, it belongs to our wholeness, it springs not from 
any necessity but from our affinity with the infinite, 
which is the principle of perfection that we have in 
our soul. 

Yes, we must become Brahma. We must not 
shrink to avow this. Our existence is meaningless 
if we never can expect to realise the highest perfection 
that there is. If we have an aim and yet can never 
reach it, then it is no aim at all. 

But can it then be said that there is no difference 
between Brahma and our individual soul? Of course 
the difference is obvious. Call it illusion or igno- 
rance, or whatever name you may give it, it is there. 
You can offer explanations but you cannot explain 
it away. Even illusion is true as illusion. 

Brahma is Brahma, he is the infinite ideal of 
perfection. But we are not what we truly are; we 
are ever to become true, ever to become Brahma. 
There is the eternal play of love in the relation be- 
tween this being and the becoming; and in the depth 
of this mystery is the source of all truth and beauty 
that sustains the endless march of creation. 



iS6 SADHANA viii 

In the music of the rushing stream sounds the 
joyful assurance, "I shall become the sea." It Is 
not a vain assumption; it is true humility, for it is 
the truth. The river has no other alternative. On 
both sides of its banks it has numerous fields and 
forests, villages and towns; it can serve them in 
various ways, cleanse them and feed them, carry their 
produce from place to place. But it can have only 
partial relations with these, and however long it may 
linger among them it remains separate; it never can 
become a town or a forest. 

But it can and does become the sea. The lesser 
moving water has its affinity with the great motion- 
less water of the ocean. It moves through the 
thousand objects on its onward course, and its motion 
finds its finality when it reaches the sea. 

The river can become the sea, but she can never 
make the sea part and parcel of herself. If, by some 
chance, she has encircled some broad sheet of water 
and pretends that she has made the sea a part of her- 
self, we at once know that it is not so, that her 
current is still seeking rest in the great ocean to 
which it can never set boundaries. 

In the same manner, our soul can only become 
Brahma as the river can become the sea. Every- 
thing else she touches at one of her points, then 
leaves and moves on, but she never can leave Brahma 
and move beyond him. Once our soul realises her 
ultimate object of repose in Brahma, all her move- 



VIII REALISATION OF THE INFINITE 157 

merits acquire a purpose. It is this ocean of infinite 
rest which gives significance to endless activities. It 
is this perfectness of being that lends to the imper- 
fection of becoming that quality of beauty which 
finds its expression in all poetry, drama, and art. 

There must be a complete idea that animates a 
poem. Every sentence of the poem touches that 
idea. When the reader realises that pervading idea, 
as he reads on, then the reading of the poem is full 
of joy to him. Then every part of the poem be- 
comes radiantly significant by the light of the whole. 
But if the poem goes on interminably, never ex- 
pressing the idea of the whole, only throwing off 
disconnected images, however beautiful, it becomes 
wearisome and unprofitable in the extreme. The 
progress of our soul is like a perfect poem. It has 
an infinite idea which once realised makes all move- 
ments full of meaning and joy. But if we detach its 
movements from that ultimate idea, if we do not see 
the infinite rest and only see the infinite motion, then 
existence appears to us a monstrous evil, impetuously 
rushing towards an unending aimlessness. 

I remember in our childhood we had a teacher 
who used to make us learn by heart the whole book 
of Sanskrit grammar, which is written in symbols, 
without explaining their meaning to us. Day after 
day we went toiling on, but on towards what, we had 
not the least notion. So, as regards our lessons, we 
were in the position of the pessimist who only counts 



158 SADHANA viir 

the breathless activities of the world, but cannot see 
the infinite repose of the perfection whence these 
activities are gaining their equilibrium every moment 
in absolute fitness and harmony. We lose all joy in 
thus contemplating existence, because we miss the 
truth. We see the gesticulations of the dancer, and 
we imagine these are directed by a ruthless tyranny 
of chance, while we are deaf to the eternal music 
which makes every one of these gestures Inevitably 
spontaneous and beautiful. These motions are ever 
growing Into that music of perfection, becoming one 
with It, dedicating to that melody at every step the 
multitudinous forms they go on creating. 

And this is the truth of our soul, and this is her 
joy, that she must ever be growing into Brahma, 
that all her movements should be modulated by this 
ultimate idea, and all her creations should be given 
as offerings to the supreme spirit of perfection. 

There is a remarkable saying In the Upanishads: 
/ think not that I know him well, or that I know him, 
or even that I know him not} 

By the process of knowledge we can never know 
the Infinite being. But If he Is altogether beyond 
our reach, then he is absolutely nothing to us. 
The truth is that we know him not, yet we know 
him. 

This has been explained In another saying of the 
Upanishads: From Brahma words come hack baffled^ 

^ Naham manye suvedeti no na vedeti vedacha. 



VIII REALISATION OF THE INFINITE 159 

as well as the mind, hut he who knows him hy the joy of 
him is free from all fears} 

Knowledge is partial, because our intellect is an 
instrument, it is only a part of us, it can give us 
information about things which can be divided and 
analysed, and whose properties can be classified, 
part by part. But Brahma is perfect, and knowl- 
edge which is partial can never be a knowledge of 
him. 

But he can be known by joy, by love. For joy 
is knowledge in its completeness, it is knowing 
by our whole being. Intellect sets us apart from the 
things to be known, but love knows its object by 
fusion. Such knowledge is immediate and admits no 
doubt. It is the same as knowing our own selves, 
only more so. 

Therefore, as the Upanishads say, mind can never 
know Brahma, words can never describe him; he can 
only be known by our soul, by her joy in him, by 
her love. Or, in other words, we can only come 
into relation with him by union — union of our 
whole being. We must be one with our Father, we 
must be perfect as he is. 

But how can that be.^ There can be no grade in 
infinite perfection. We cannot grow more and more 
into Brahma. He is the absolute one, and there can 
be no more or less in him. 

^ Yato vacho nlvartante aprapya manasa saha anandam brahmano 
vidvan na vibheti kuta^chana. 



i6o SADHANA viii 

Indeed, the realisation of the paramdtman, the 
supreme soul, within our antardtman, our inner 
individual soul, is in a state of absolute completion. 
We cannot think of It as non-existent and depending 
on our limited powers for its gradual construction. 
If our relation with the divine were all a thing of 
our own making, how should we rely on it as true, 
and how should it lend us support? 

Yes, we must know that within us we have that 
where space and time cease to rule and where the 
links of evolution are merged in unity. In that 
everlasting abode of the dtman, the soul, the revela- 
tion of the paramdtman, the supreme soul, is already 
complete. Therefore the Upanishads say: He who 
knows Brahman, the true, the all-conscious, and the 
infinite as hidden in the depths of the soul, which is 
the supreme sky {the inner sky of consciousness) , enjoys 
all objects of desire in union with the all-knowing 
Brahman} 

The union is already accomplished. The para- 
mdtman, the supreme soul, has himself chosen this 
soul of ours as his bride and the marriage has been 
completed. The solemn mantram has been uttered: 
Let thy heart be even as my heart is.^ There is no 
room in this marriage for evolution to act the 
part of the master of ceremonies. The eshah, who 

^ Satyam jnanam anantam brahma yo veda nihitam guhayam parame 
vyornan so'gnute sarvan kaman saha brahmana vipasfhite. 
2 Yadetat hridayam mama tadastu hridayan tava. 



VIII REALISATION OF THE INFINITE i6i 

cannot otherwise be described than as This, the 
nameless immediate presence, is ever here in our 
innermost being. "This eshah, or This, is the 
supreme end of the other this"; ^ "this This is the 
supreme treasure of the other this"; ^ "this This is 
the supreme dwelKng of the other this"; ^ "this This 
is the supreme joy of the other this."^ Because the 
marriage of supreme love has been accomplished in 
timeless time. And now goes on the endless llld, 
the play of love. He who has been gained in eternity 
is now being pursued in time and space, in joys 
and sorrows, in this world and in the worlds beyond. 
When the soul-bride understands this well, her 
heart is blissful and at rest. She knows that she, 
like a river, has attained the ocean of her fulfilment 
at one end of her being, and at the other end she is 
ever attaining it; at one end it is eternal rest and 
completion, at the other it is incessant movement 
and change. When she knows both ends as in- 
separably connected, then she knows the world as 
her own household by the right of knowing the 
master of the world as her own lord. Then all her 
services becomes services of love, all the troubles and 
tribulations of life come to her as trials triumphantly 
borne to prove the strength of her love, smilingly to 
win the wager from her lover. But so long as she 
remains obstinately in the dark, lifts not her veil, 

^Eshasya parama gatih. ^gghasya parama sampat. 

' Eshasya paramo lokah. * Eshasya parama anandah. 



i62 SADHANA viii 

does not recognise her lover, and only knows the 
world dissociated from him, she serves as a handmaid 
here, where by right she might reign as a queen; she 
sways in doubt, and weeps in sorrow and dejection. 
She passes from starvation to starvation^ from trouble to 
trouble J and from fear to fear} 

I can never forget that scrap of a song I once 
heard in the early dawn in the midst of the din of 
the crowd that had collected for a festival the night 
before: "Ferryman, take me across to the other 
shore!" 

In the bustle of all our work there comes out 
this cry, "Take me across." The carter in India 
sings while driving his cart, "Take me across." 
The itinerant grocer deals out his goods to his 
customers and sings, "Take me across." 

What is the meaning of this cry? We feel we 
have not reached our goal; and we know with all 
our striving and toiling we do not come to the end, 
we do not attain our object. Like a child dissatisfied 
with its dolls, our heart cries, "Not this, not this." 
But what is that other? Where is the further shore? 

Is it something else than what we have? Is it 
somewhere else than where we are? Is it to take 
rest from all our works, to be relieved from all the 
responsibilities of life? 

No, in the very heart of our activities we are 
seeking for our end. We are crying for the across, 

* Daurbhikshat yati daurbhiksham klefat klefam bhayat bhayam. 



VIII REALISATION OF THE INFINITE 163 

even where we stand. So, while our lips utter their 
prayer to be carried away, our busy hands are never 
idle. 

In truth, thou ocean of joy, this shore and the other 
shore are one and the same in thee. When I call 
this my own, the other lies estranged; and missing 
the sense of that completeness which is in me, my 
heart incessantly cries out for the other. All my 
this, and that other, are waiting to be completely 
reconciled in thy love. 

This "I" of mine toils hard, day and night, for 
a home which it knows as its own. Alas, there will 
be no end of its sufferings so long as it is not able 
to call this home thine. Till then it will struggle 
on, and its heart will ever cry, "Ferryman, lead me 
across." When this home of mine is made thine, 
that very moment is it taken across, even while its old 
walls enclose it. This "I" is restless. It is working 
for a gain which can never be assimilated with its 
spirit, which it never can hold and retain. In its 
efforts to clasp in its own arms that which is for all, 
it hurts others and is hurt in its turn, and cries, 
"Lead me across." But as soon as it is able to say, 
"All my work is thine," everything remains the 
same, only it is taken across. 

Where can I meet thee unless in this mine home 
made thine? Where can I join thee unless in this 
my work transformed into thy work? If I leave 
my home I shall not reach thy home; if I cease my 



i64 SADHANA viii 

work I can never join thee in thy work. For thou 
dwellest in me and I in thee. Thou without me or 
I without thee are nothing. 

Therefore, in the midst of our home and our 
work, the prayer rises, "Lead me across!" For 
here rolls the sea, and even here lies the other shore 
waiting to be reached — yes, here is this everlasting 
present, not distant, not anywhere else. 



'TpHE following pages contain advertisements of 
Macmillan books by the same author. 



By RABINDRANATH TAGORE 



The Gardener 

Translated by the Author from the Original Bengali 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.25 net. Postpaid, $1.36 

FRONTISPIECE 

Most of the lyrics of love and life, the translations of which from 
Bengali are published in this book, were written much earlier than 
the series of religious poems contained in the book named " Gitan- 
jali." The translations are not always Hteral — the originals being 
sometimes abridged and sometimes paraphrased. 

"In India, Mr. Tagore has a reputation of an extraordinarily 
exalted and universal nature. His genius must indeed be the 
mouthpiece of a national aspiration and philosophy to have moved 
so profoundly a country as vast as his." — The Bookman {London). 

"It seems not unlikely that this poet may win himself a spiritual 
empire comparable with that of the classic Persians; the future 
may see in his work the expression not merely of his race but of 
the East — at least of the non-Turanian East." 

— Laselles Abercrombie. 

"The prose-poems pour out from his lips not merely thoroughly 
Indian, but also thoroughly original and individual in form and 
matter." — The India Times. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



By RABINDRANATH TAGORE 



The Crescent Moon (Child-Poems) 

Translated by the Author from the Original Bengali 
With Eight Illustrations in Color 

Cloth, 4to 

As the title implies this little volume contains poems devoted 
to the subject of children. The illustrations are reproduced in 
color from drawings by a native artist. 

"Mr. Tagore's translation preserves not only all that is essential 
and eternal in his poetry, but much of the strange magic. Indeed, 
the substance of it is of such supreme value and vitality that no 
translation could have killed it. Above all, its simplicity and its 
transparency survive: for they are of the substance of this poet's 
vision. . . . 

In the poems of this mystic the world appears no longer in its 
brutality, its vehemence, its swift yet dense fluidity; it is seized 
in the very moment of its passing and fixed in the clarity and still- 
ness of his vision." 

— May Sinclair in The North American Review. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



By RABINDRANATH TAGORE 



Gitanjali (Song OfFerings) 

A Collection of Prose Translations made by the Author from the 

Original Bengali 

With an introduction by W. B. YEATS 

And a Portrait of the Author by W. ROTHENSTEIN 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.40 net 

"His poems are of the very stuff of imagination, and yet gay 
and vivid with a fresh and delicious fancy. Their beauty is as 
dehcate as the reflection of the color of a flower." 

— The Westminster Gazette. 

"They reveal a poet of undeniable authority and a spiritual 
influence singularly in touch with modern thought and modern 
needs." — The Daily News. 

"Mr. Tagore's translations are of trance-like beauty." — The 
AthencBum. 

" ... It is the essence of all poetry of East and West alike, 
the language of the soul." — The Indian Magazine and Review. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 198 918 8 



